The opening-night picture for the festival's new Canada First! program is Saint Ralph, which tells the story of a ninth-grader who is a kind of road warrior. Ralph (Adam Butcher) is the irrepressible Hamiltonian who sets out to make a miracle happen in the only way that makes sense to his young mind: by winning the 1954 Boston Marathon.

It's a smart choice to inaugurate Canada First!, which replaces Perspective Canada, the 20 year-old program dedicated to showcasing productions from this country (there is also now a separate lineup set aside for Canadian short films – Short Cuts Canada). The features in Canada First! are by first-time filmmakers from this country, or second-time directors who are appearing at the festival for the first time.

Saint Ralph is quintessential Canadiana. It's the kind of film that has the same sort of charm as the fiction of Roch Carrier or the paintings of Ken Danby. In short, it's a crowd-pleaser. This is not one of those dark, difficult Canadian films that leaves you feeling depressed and lost after you see it; it's the kind of picture designed to make viewers feel a little better about being citizens of the True North.

The majority of the movie rests on Butcher's slender shoulders. Butcher's Ralph sets out to revive his mother, who is in a coma, by doing the impossible and winning North America's most prestigious race.

Part of the film's gentle humour stems from following the set of very Catholic deductions that leads Ralph to the race. A kind nurse (Jennifer Tilly) tells the boy that only a miracle would bring his mother back; his cross-country coach (Campbell Scott) subsequently declares that it would be a feat to rival the loaves and fishes if any of his charges won the Boston event. Ergo, Ralph concludes, he must win the marathon to restore his mother to health.

Ralph won't let anything stand in the way of his goal, especially not his school's stern headmaster (Gordon Pinsent). It's a joy to watch Butcher as, time and time again, he refuses to let his spirit be broken. He is aided by Scott's wonderful Father Hibbert, a free-thinking priest who likes to quote Nietzsche and who finally concludes he chose to be a member of the wrong order: "They told me the Basilians don't run. I shoulda joined the Jesuits."

And keep an eye out for the cameo by Seán Cullen as a former student who still holds a grudge against Pinsent. It's brief, but the resulting comic impact is lasting. (Cullen also has a similarly memorable moment on screen in Rob Stefaniuk's Phil The Alien.)

To say that Saint Ralph is the finest Canadian movie about a boy and his running coach since Meatballs would be a backhanded compliment. So let's just say that director Michael McGowan and his team have crafted that rarest of films – a Canadian motion picture with genuine mainstream appeal – and leave it at that.

The publicity material for Wajdi Mouawad's Littoral bills the film as a "road movie Québécois." That description is accurate, up to a point – Littoral is indeed a road picture, but it's way more stylish than you might expect.

The plot seems rudimentary enough. Wahab (Steve Laplante) is a young Montrealer of Lebanese descent. After his father passes away in a snowstorm, Wahab decides to return the body to Kfar Ryat, a small settlement in Lebanon. The trip, naturally, doesn't go as planned.

The advance word on Littoral was that it was the most visually striking selection in Canada First!. It may not be that, but it certainly does have more than its share of inventive moments. At the beginning of the film, for instance, Wahab visits the rented room where his father spent his final days. Listening to a tape recording of the old man's voice, Wahab is transported to Lebanon – literally. He opens the room's door, then steps onto one of the Middle Eastern nation's dusty beaches.

Apart from these touches of magic realism, what's great about Mouawad's direction is that he's confident enough to resist including any obvious road-movie clichés (although the casket resting on the roof of Wahab's hired car is a distant echo of the seminal image from Highway 61). Mouawad also isn't afraid to give the audience a little credit, as when he stretches scenes beyond what seem to be their natural end.

One such scene comes after Wahab arrives in Lebanon and is waiting with the coffin on the tarmac at the local airport. After sweating in the hot sun for hours, he is finally grilled by two soldiers: if he's Lebanese, as he claims, then why does he carry a Canadian passport? This exchange leads to one of the film's recurring themes: the impossibility of defining Wahab's identity. If he's Lebanese, he's asked later on, then why does he not speak Arabic? "It's complicated," he answers. Finally, the questions about his origins become too much. "Next person who asks me, I'll slap him," he screams.

Even harder for Wahab to comprehend is the clash of cultures that takes place every day in Lebanon. Wahab can't figure out, for instance, why soldiers from the Syrian army are omnipresent in his father's homeland. And his driver worships not a native pop singer, but a British siren, Samantha Fox.

There aren't many road movies that are rooted in a place like Lebanon, a land of bombed-out buildings and minefields. And there isn't a single other movie in which the climactic fight scene doesn't take place on a battlefield, but a Foosball table.

So bravo.