Overview Canada 2014
Spread the word Canada’s growing film industry is expanding its international reach. John Hazelton talks to the major players about funding, the changing distribution landscape and new co-production opportunities
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f the Canadian film industry needs a new poster boy, Denis Villeneuve could be the man for the job. Talk to Canadian experts these days and they often cite Quebec-born writer-director Villeneuve — who last year made both Hollywood studio hit Prisoners and award-winning Canadian indie film Enemy — as an example of how their industry is now producing world-class talent as well as films that can work at home and, increasingly, internationally. “We’ve seen a kind of internationalisation of Canadian talent this year,” says Martin Katz, chair of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (ACCT) and a producer with credits including David Cronenberg’s Cannes Competition entry Maps To The Stars. Villeneuve, says Katz, is “a brilliant film-maker who has exploded out of the gate through the Canadian system and produced not one but two remarkably affecting and successful films in the same year”. The current health of the Canadian business may have something to do with the industry’s mix of domestic and international influences and blend of public and private funding. Federal cultural agencies Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board (NFB) play an important role in maintaining that health. Telefilm fosters and promotes the nation’s audiovisual industry and executive director Carolle Brabant notes that film-makers such as Villeneuve, JeanMarc Vallée (director of the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club), Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg “are from the system that we’ve created and supported”. Canadian films screen in most of the important festivals around the world, says Brabant, “and our international sales are increasing year after year. Where there is still a challenge is on the Canadian front, in making people more
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aware of the success of the films.” (For more on how Telefilm is meeting the promotional challenge, see page 12.) As a producer of documentaries — including a couple by Villeneuve — anim a te d s h o r t s a n d i n te ra c t iv e productions, NFB is not directly involved in the feature film industry. “We’re part of the Canadian landscape but we’re not a training school,” says assistant commissioner Claude Joli-Coeur. Yet a policy of “taking risks that the private sector cannot take has given the NFB a stronger place” in the landscape, Joli-Coeur adds. The Canadian industry’s private sector appears robust, partly, some suggest, because the country’s banks and financial institutions were not as badly affected by the 2008 global financial crisis as banks in other important filmmaking regions. Thanks to a raft of well-established federal and provincial incentives and a wealth of below-the-line talent, the level of incoming productions has remained high, with 232 foreign productions shooting in Canada in 2012, according to Telefilm Canada figures.
The F Word
Local opportunities In some cases, the incoming production from Hollywood and elsewhere has created opportunities for Canadian producers as well. Pinewood Toronto Studios, the facility that linked up with the UK-based Pinewood Studios Group in 2009, “was set up as a studio that would attract the bigger budget films,” says Eoin Egan, Pinewood’s VP of international sales. “But in order to engage with the town and the city, it’s very important to have a thriving independent sector and we work with low-budget films as well.” To that end, Pinewood Toronto joined forces last year with Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) to launch an emerging film-makers initiative that offers discounted sound-stage
‘What we’re starting to see more of is the export of our finished goods in the film world’ Martin Katz, Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
access and office space to films backed by OMDC’s film fund. The ripple effect caused by incoming projects has helped drive the production of bigger Canadian films with bigger stars. These films — such as upcoming wide-release comedy The F Word — have a better chance of connecting with audiences on a worldwide basis. “Historically, we have been very good at exporting our talent and what we’re starting to see more of this year is the export of our finished goods in the film world,” says ACCT chair Katz. “Filmmakers have had a number of films that have been successful at a national level and now it looks like they’re likely to be successful internationally as well.”
Distribution trends Canada’s distribution sector serves a strong French-language market and an English-language market in which distributors of local films have had to work hard to compete with the US studios. That situation may be changing, though, because of the rapid growth of local giant Entertainment One (eOne)
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