Genie Award for Best Motion Picture

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Motion Picture to the best Canadian film.

The award was first presented in 1949 by the Canadian Film Awards under the title Film of the Year. Due to the economics of Canadian film production, however, most Canadian films made in this era were documentaries or short films rather than full-length narrative feature films. In some years, a Film of the Year award was not formally presented, with the highest film award presented that year being in the Theatrical Short and/or Amateur Film categories; due to the lack of an official Film of the Year winner, however, the winners in those categories are considered de facto films of the year.

In 1964, the Canadian Film Awards introduced an award for Best Feature Film. For the remainder of the 1960s, the two awards were presented alongside each other to different films, except in 1965 when a Feature Film was named and a Film of the Year was not, and in 1967 when the same film was named the winner of both categories. After 1970, however, the Film of the Year category was no longer used except in 1975, when it was presented to the same film that had been named the Feature Film winner.

In 1974, when the awards were otherwise cancelled due to a boycott by francophone filmmakers from Quebec, the Canadian Film Awards committee nonetheless held a press conference to announce a Best Feature Film winner for the year despite not presenting awards in any other category.

As of 1980, the award was taken over by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and presented as part of the Genie Awards ceremony; as of 2013, it is presented as part of the Canadian Screen Awards.

Films coloured in yellow are official Films of the Year; films coloured in peach are those which were not formally named Film of the Year, but which were the highest award presented to a film in that year.

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