While the Whistler Film Festival has always been strong on Canadian content, this year's lineup, revealed on Wednesday (November 5), boasts 11 world premieres of Canadian films.

Over lunch on South Granville, WFF programming director Paul Gratton said that this year, they received far more Canadian premiere requests than before.

Five of the world premieres of Canadian films are from B.C.:

• After Film School by Joel Ashton McCarthy

• Bad City by Carl Bessai (Sisters & Brothers, Repeaters)

• Mountain Men by Cameron Labine (Control Alt Delete)

• Snowman, a documentary by Whistler filmmaker Mike Douglas about an avalanche controller whose mission goes wrong

• What An Idiot by Peter Benson

Other Canadian world premieres include:

• After the Ball by Sean Garrity (My Awkward Sexual Adventure)

• Elsewhere, N.Y. by Jeffrey P. Nesker

• The Cocksure Lads by Murray Foster

• Les Loups (Wolves) by Sophie Deraspe

• Pretend We're Kissing by Matt Sadowski

• Stay Awhile by Jessica Edwards

Other films from Canada (which round the Cancon list to a total of 22 films) include:

• The Backward Class, a documentary by Vancouver director Madeleine Grant about Indian students from the lowest castes working towards college entrance exams

• Bang Bang Baby by Jeffrey St Jules

• Big Muddy by Jefferson Moneo

• Felix and Meira by Maxime Giroux (named best Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival)

• I Put a Hit on You by Dane Clark and Liney Stewart

• The Outlaw League by Jean Beaudry

• We Were Wolves by Jordan Canning

There's also the Canada-South Korea coproduction In Her Place by director Albert Shin.

Gratton explained that After Film School, a mockumentary about film school grads who attempt to secure funding for their first features, will be available after the festival on the forthcoming Canadian film VOD platform that the First Weekend Club will be launching with the National Film Board of Canada.

Other films of note include:

• Merchants of Doubt (USA) by Robert Kenner, a documentary about climate change deniers

• A Most Violent Year (USA) by J.C. Candor, starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain

• Still Alice (USA) by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, starring Kristen Stewart and Julianne Moore as a woman battling Alzheimer's

• Elsa & Fred (USA) starring Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer

• The Theory of Everything (USA) by James Marsh, starring Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as his wife Jane in a fight against his ALS diagnosis

• The Homesman (USA) by Tommy Lee Jones, starring Jones and Hilary Swank

• A Life in Dirty Movies (Sweden) by Wiktor Ericsson about sexploitation director Joe Sarno and his wife Peggy

The festival runs from December 3 to 7. For more information and a full list of films, visit the WFF website.