Screen Telefilm Canada Supplement Feb 2015

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canada special 2015

Canada 2015 A Berlin showcAse UK office MBI, Zetland House 5-25 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4HJ Tel: +44 (0) 20 3033 4267 US office 8581 Santa Monica Blvd, #707, West Hollywood, CA 90069

E-mail: firstname.lastname@screendaily.com (unless stated) Editorial Supplement editor Louise Tutt US editor Jeremy Kay +1 310 922 5908 jeremykay67@gmail.com News editor Michael Rosser +44 (0) 20 3033 2720 Chief critic and reviews editor Mark Adams +44 7841 527 505 Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray +44 (0) 20 3033 2817 Group art director, MBI Peter Gingell +44 (0) 20 3033 4203 peter.gingell@mb-insight.com Chief reporter Andreas Wiseman +44 (0) 20 3033 2848 Asia editor Liz Shackleton, lizshackleton@gmail.com Contributing editors Sarah Cooper, Fionnuala Halligan, John Hazelton, Louise Tutt Contributing reporter Ian Sandwell Sub editor Adam Richmond Advertising and publishing Commercial director Nadia Romdhani +44 (0) 20 7391 4518 Sales manager Scott Benfold +44 (0) 20 7391 4533 UK, France, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Middle East, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand Scott Benfold +44 (0) 20 7391 4533 Germany, Scandinavia, Benelux, eastern Europe Gunter Zerbich +44 (0) 20 3033 2930 Italy, Asia, India Ingrid Hammond +39 05 7829 8768 ingridhammond@libero.it VP business development, North America Nigel Daly +1 323 654 2301 / 213 447 5120 nigeldalymail@gmail.com US sales and business development executive Nikki Tilmouth +1 323 868 7633 nikki.screeninternational@gmail.com Production manager Jonathon Cooke +44 (0) 20 3033 4296 jonathon.cooke@mb-insight.com Festival and events manager Jessica Stacey +44 (0) 20 3033 2870 jessica.stacey@mb-insight.com Group commercial director, MBI Alison Pitchford +44 (0) 20 3033 2949 alison.pitchford@mb-insight.com Subscription customer service +44 (0) 1604 828 706 help@subscribe.screendaily.com Sales administrator Justyna Zieba +44 (0) 20 3033 2694 justyna.zieba@mb-insight.com Chief executive, MBI Conor Dignam +44 (0) 20 3033 2717 conor.dignam@mb-insight.com Screen International is part of Media Business Insight Ltd (MBI), also publisher of Broadcast and shots

The quiet might of the Canadian film industry and the wealth of its talent is dazzling. In this special issue to celebrate Canada’s presence at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival, John Hazelton looks at the new projects emerging from the territory, its enviably successful public funding programme and how it is blazing a trail when it comes to the exciting new world of interactive production.

Indeed, Telefilm Canada’s eye-catching Perspective Canada promotional showcase at Berlin’s European Film Market champions the territory’s deep pool of creativity. This year’s selection of agency-backed projects is a quilt of many hues and textures, ranging from Francois Delisle’s black-and-white meditation on grief in Chorus (also screening in Panorama) to audacious genre titles such as Bruce McDonald’s Hellions and Turbo Kid, a triple-hander from Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell.

Perspective Canada also includes Guy Maddin’s feature The Forbidden Room, which is screening in the Berlinale’s Forum section and made in conjunction with his transmedia project Seances. We talk to Maddin

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8 Hot prospects

Telefilm Canada’s Michel Pradier explains why the agency has transformed the way it invests in projects

The ninth annual Perspective Canada Berlin programme is showcasing 14 notable completed Canadian features and co-productions to international buyers at the European Film Market

4 tHe active interactives Canada’s innovative new transmedia projects

6 case study: Guy Maddin The director on Seances and The Forbidden Room www.screendaily.com

about his decision to make such an interactive piece, an exercise he says he found so invigorating he now insists he could “do a conventional movie in my sleep”.

Indeed, Telefilm Canada itself is on an early 2015 roll that started in Park City, where its Canada Feature Film Fund backed seven of the record 10 Canadian films and co-productions screening at Sundance this year.

The agency typically allocates around $66.2m (c$80m) of public money per year into development, production assistance and marketing support. David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars, Atom Egoyan’s The Captive and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy have all received help alongside projects that fall under a new microbudget production remit.

“We want to have a balanced portfolio in terms of genre and regional access and gender support; all those things are important for us,” says director of project financing Michel Pradier.

The results of that balancing act are evident for all to see at the Berlinale and beyond.

Jeremy Kay, US editor

12 sure sHots We profile some of the most exciting new Canadian projects of 2015 February 2015 Screen International 1

IntervIew MIchel PradIer

Embracing the market Telefilm Canada’s director of project financing, Michel Pradier, tells John Hazelton why the agency has transformed the way it invests in projects

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ichel Pradier holds the strings to a large and important purse. As Telefilm Canada’s director of project financing, he makes the decisions that steer funding from the federal cultural agency into the development, production and marketing of both Canadian films and projects officially co-produced by Canada and other nations.

In a typical year, that funding amounts to about $50.1m (c$60m) in production assistance, $10m-$10.9m (c$12m-c$13m) in marketing support and around $5.8m (c$7m) in development backing, for a total of around $66.8m (c$80m). Last year, Telefilm funding helped bring Atom Egoyan’s The Captive, David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars, Xavier Dolan’s Mommy and Michael Dowse’s What If (aka The F Word) to international screens.

This year, seven of the 10 Canadian features at last month’s Sundance Film Festival — among them documentary The Amina Profile, UK-Ireland-Canada co-production Brooklyn, Bruce McDonald’s Hellions, Canada-New Zealand

‘It’s not our mandate to have a return on investment; our goal is to support Canadian talent’ Michel Pradier, Telefilm Canada

genre co-production Turbo Kid and Claudia Llosa’s Spain-France-Canada collaboration Aloft — received financial assistance from the agency. All four Canadian projects screening in the Berlinale’s festival line-up benefited from Telefilm backing: Francois Delisle’s Panorama title Chorus, Mathieu Denis’ Generation drama Corbo, the world premiere of Anton Corbijn’s UK-Canada coproduction Life and Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, screening in Forum.

The agency funnelled $77.1m (c$92.2m) into the Canadian film industry during 2013-14, which Pradier says was “a record year in terms of the number of films supported, because it was the first year we got the full impact of the recent changes in our programmes”.

Those changes included the introduction of a micro-budget production programme that added another 10-12 projects to the total backed and the expansion of the agency’s completion funding programme to include large as well as small-budget projects.

Also important, says Pradier, “was that we asked the market to be much

Life

more involved. That generates more leverage of the Telefilm dollars, so it results in more projects.”

When deciding whether to invest, Telefilm looks at the production company and creative team, the level of market interest and the project’s ability to showcase Canada’s cultural diversity through the inclusion of Aboriginal communities and linguistic minorities.

“The criteria to invest are very specific — the track record of the company, the marketing plan, the capacity to reach the audience,” Pradier says. “We also want a balanced portfolio in terms of genre and regional access and gender support.”

Corbo 2 Screen International February 2015

nurturing the industry “As a public institution,” Pradier continues, “we’re here to support Canadian talent and to promote and foster this industry. It’s not our mandate to have a return on investment; our goal is to support Canadian talent and promote it in a way that it will be seen by the most people possible in Canada and abroad.” www.screendaily.com

A review of Telefilm’s recoupment policies, meanwhile, will make the funding programmes simpler and more predictable, Pradier suggests.

Telefilm rarely makes a profit on its production investments and when it does, says Pradier, “80% of the revenues come from very few investments.

So why impose hard negotiations on every project when we know the revenue streams are really generated by a specific type of film?”

From now on, he explains, “we will concentrate on those types of films and ease up on the other ones. It doesn’t mean we’re abandoning recoupment.

We’re just going to ease up on the negotiation.” The simplification, he adds, will be “a big advantage for producers because they have to deal with a ton of other equity investors. When it’s predictable and very easy to contract, it’s a big advantage for them”.

When a project is aimed at a large audience, “we will look very carefully at the commercial indicators”. And when “a more culturally important filmmaker” is involved, Pradier adds, “we like to be confident they might reach another level of excellence”.

International co-productions can apply for backing as long as they are officially certified — 14 of them, involving nine partner countries, were supported by Telefilm in 2013-14 — and the criteria used to assess applications is the same as for all-Canadian projects.

The changes in Telefilm funding programmes, which are the result of consultations with the Canadian industry, have affected the programmes overseen by Pradier in a variety of ways.

The introduction of the agency’s internal Success Index — which provides a measure of a film’s accomplishments based on a weighted combination of box office and other sales, nominations and awards, and private-sector contributions — has helped to clarify www.screendaily.com

investment decisions. The index, Pradier explains, “shows the key elements of each project”. He adds: “The better track record you have, the easier it is for your company to access dollars.”

The increased importance now placed on recognition of market interest in a project — a policy that in its first year led to a rise from 12.5% to 14% in contributions from distributors and exhibitors, and a rise from 3% to 16% from foreign partners — has also had a tangible effect. So too has the launch of Telefilm’s Talent Fund, which accepts private donations to help support emerging talent and finance the production and marketing of Canadian films.

“What we’re seeing so far is that, especially for bigger budget films, our investment is generating much more leverage than before,” says Pradier. “For projects with budgets of more than $6.7m-$8.3m (c$8m-c$10m) the market speaks louder than it used to. As a result, we’re producing bigger films for the same kind of investment.”

‘The better track record you have, the easier it is for your company to access dollars’ Michel Pradier, Telefilm Canada

positive noise The consultation that led to such changes in Telefilm policy is part of an ongoing process by which the agency keeps in touch with the wider Canadian audiovisual industry.

Telefilm is, according to Pradier, “regarded very positively by the Canadian industry. Because we’re funding Canadian film, of course, but also because we offer many other services.

“We make a lot of positive noise on the international scene,” he adds. “And in a more pragmatic way, every time you sign a contract with Telefilm, a week later you receive a survey to see if you’re satisfied. And there’s a satisfaction level of more than 80%.”

Telefilm’s relationship with the Canadian government — which in 2013-14 provided $83.5m (c$100m) of the agency’s total revenue of $102m (c$122.2m) — has been somewhat tested since 2012, when the federal budget called for Telefilm, the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to cut their budgets by 10% over a three-year period.

Pradier maintains the cuts were made without imposing damage on Telefilm’s funding programmes.

“We had to cut 10%,” he says, “and we did it in three years. We cut a lot in administration and we revisited 90% of our programmes in consultation with the industry. So we were able to diminish the negative impact of the cuts on the programmes themselves. Luckily for s us, the cuts are now over.” n February 2015 Screen International 3

FEaTurE TransmEdia

Guy Maddin on the set of transmedia project Seances

THE acTivE inTEracTivEs Canada’s creative community is leading the world when it comes to innovative transmedia projects. John Hazelton finds out why

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ransmedia, new media, multiplatform programming or, most commonly, interactive production — whatever you call it, Canadian artists, companies and institutions are among its most innovative and important proponents.

While the vibrancy of the country’s interactive production sector is in part attributed to the availability of public funding for new-media ventures, there are other contributing factors — the tax break-assisted growth of the territory’s video-game and visual-effects companies, for one — that should help to keep Canada at the forefront of what is still a nascent industry.

One Canadian artist on the cutting edge of the business is Vincent Morisset, the Montreal-based director and founder of new-media studio AATOAA. Known for projects such as Webby award winner BLA BLA and rock band Arcade Fire’s video Just A Reflektor, Morisset

4 Screen International February 2015

‘Hollywood is really intrigued and curious about how to use this new canvas’ Vincent Morisset, AATOAA

most recently made Way To Go, a mix of handmade animation, 360-degree video capture, music and code that screened at Sundance as one of the festival’s New Frontier installations. As Morisset describes it, Way To Go “is some kind of convergence of cinema grammar and interactive mechanisms. You play with it, or interact with it, as you would a traditional video game, but what you’re seeing is reality that we went into the woods and captured. And it’s also an essay about how we look at our environment”.

Morisset suggests Canada’s prominence in interactive production may also be the result of educational opportunities such as the University of Quebec and Montreal’s multimedia programme. He was one of the first students some 15 years ago. Now, says Morisset, “Hollywood is really intrigued and curious about how to use this new canvas and they’re trying to figure out how to monetise it.”

Félix & Paul Studios, also in Montreal, is an example of how creativity, technology and entrepreneurship can align in Canada’s transmedia sector.

The company, which recently attracted investment from Montreal’s Phi Centre arts complex, has developed a proprietary platform for 3D 360-degree liveaction virtual reality (VR) filming and post-production.

The platform was used to create three VR pieces that also screened in Sundance’s New Frontier section. These include Herders, Strangers with Patrick Watson and Wild — The Experience, a piece financed by Fox Searchlight, which distributed Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild feature.

“It’s not a scene from the film,” explains Félix Lajeunesse, who formed Félix & Paul with Paul Raphael. “It’s a piece inspired by the world of the film, by the characters. It’s something that can stand alone and live by itself.” Lajeunesse www.screendaily.com

Strangers Wild — The Experience

Way To Go

says with consumer VR headsets just beginning to become available, “the market for VR as a medium that enters global culture is very slowly starting. Predictions are that this market will find a form of maturity by 2017 or 2018.

“I don’t think you have a critical mass of potential buyers at this point,” Lajeunesse adds. “For it to be a successful business model for content providers, it’s going to take at least 18 months.”

Certainly, the most significant factor in the buoyancy of Canada’s transmedia sector has been the support of public institutions. And foremost among those institutions has been the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Founded 70 years ago with a mandate to engage audiences through media production in all its guises reflecting Canada and Canadian points of view, NFB recently went through a strategic shift towards digital content.

And as part of the move it has created digital studio programmes for both English and French-language projects.

The aim was “to take a world leadership in the genre”, says Hugues Sweeney, Montreal-based executive producer of the French-language programme. Each one produces around 10 projects a year with budgets ranging www.screendaily.com

from $21,000 ( c $25,000) up to $335,000 (c$400,000).

The programmes have generated a slew of acclaimed projects, including Fort McMoney, produced in collaboration with Franco-German TV network Arte, and Seven Digital Deadly Sins, cocreated with UK newspaper The Guardian. Both were nominated for the Canadian Screen Award for best original interactive production.

NFB also funded Morisset’s Way To Go and Seances, Guy Maddin’s interactive counterpart to his feature The Forbidden Room, which is screening in the Berlinale Forum (see case study overleaf).

‘Why is this interactive?’

Sweeney says NFB’s criteria for selecting projects include an exploration of “where content meets form. How does the interaction tell the story? The big question is always, why is this interactive? How does the fact this is on a live internet connection feed the story?”

Most of the ideas for projects come from the digital studio programmes, which then work with outside artists to develop material. “Because we’re such an emerging form,” says Sweeney, “almost every project is in some way a prototype.”

‘Wild — The Experience is inspired by the world and characters of the feature film’ Félix Lajeunesse, Félix & Paul Studios

While NFB’s programmes are primarily designed to foster interactive production in a non-commercial arena, they may also be contributing to the growth of a new industry.

“It’s the public media landscape that has helped this as a business,” says Loc Dao, the Vancouver-based executive producer of NFB’s English-language digital studio programme. “On one hand, part of our mandate is to be able to experiment and take risks in order to innovate and further both the craft and the forms of storytelling, where commercial organisations cannot.

“On the other hand, most organisations that create work for the internet are still figuring out business models. If we can create a powerful engagement with audiences, that’s heading in the right direction while the new revenue models are being sorted out by people who are much smarter than us in that area.”

NFB’s role in fostering transmedia production is appreciated by Canadian film-makers, young and not so young.

Seances and The Forbidden Room creator Maddin suggests NFB’s digital shift has left it in a strong position to foster Canada’s emerging new-media industry.

“NFB is committed and they have some bright young film-makers who are really tech-savvy running the show now,” Maddin says. “They’re really smart and committed to making you think through every project so nothing is gratuitous. Nothing is interactive for s the sake of being interactive.” n

Case study Guy Maddin The director on his Seances online project and its feature companion

February 2015 Screen International 5

casE sTudY sEancEs & THE FOrBiddEn rOOm

MADDIN’S HAPPY ACCIDENTS To finance his interactive, online short film series Seances, Guy Maddin had to shoot a feature companion piece called The Forbidden Room. He talks to John Hazelton

conoclastic Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin is best known for shorts and features that echo the look and style of early cinema, among them Archangel, The Saddest Music In The World and My Winnipeg. But when it came to his latest work, Maddin had a more contemporary medium in mind.

What emerged is a piece of art that genuinely deserves its transmedia label: a film and new-media hybrid consisting of interactive experience.

Seances will appear online later this year, and feature film The Forbidden Room premiered at Sundance and screens in the Berlinale Forum.

The cheerfully self-deprecating Maddin says his relatively conventional films “all have more or less the same future in most countries — they get made and slid on a shelf ”, he smiles. “I realised I could more efficiently reach every person in the world that might be inclined to like me if I just tried to make art on the internet.

“What I really wanted most was an interactive internet experience,” the Winnipeg-based writer-director adds, “but I knew when I embarked on the project that it had the potential to go to any number of places and I was prepared to let it evolve naturally.”

Lost films of the silent and early talkie eras that have been documented but for which there are no known prints in existence provided Maddin with his inspiration. He researched the plots from archives and used these as the basis for the short films of Seances.

“I started to think of these lost movies as films with no known final resting place,” he says. “Narratives doomed to wander the landscape of film history, unable to project themselves for a public that might watch them and enjoy them.”

The project’s first phase was 18 days of shooting at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2012, followed by a 13-day shoot at the Phi Centre arts complex in Montreal in 2013.

Each day was designed to yield a

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‘I realised I could more efficiently reach every person in the world that might be inclined to like me if I just tried to make art on the internet’ Guy Maddin, director

Guy Maddin

20-minute short based on a particular ‘lost’ film. And for much of the time, visitors to the two public centres were able to watch the process, making the shoot itself a kind of art installation.

“Their presence made me a bit more of a showman and galvanised me to work more efficiently,” Maddin says. “It also introduced the element of chance a bit more. I really need my happy accidents when I’m making films.”

creating excitement The idea of crafting a feature as well as an interactive experience out of the footage formalised while funds were being raised between the two shoots.

Pitching the new-media concept to potential funders “never took less than 45 minutes of fervid speechifying”, Maddin recalls. “Everyone I spoke to, especially at the government funding levels, was excited that I was working in new media.

“But quite often very strict bureaucratic rules forbade them from supporting new media to the degree that film needs money. I needed to access film grant money, so it had to exist as a film as well as new media.”

In the end, around $830,000 (c$1m) was raised for the entire project, with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) paying for most of Seances and sources including Phi Films, Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film & Music covering the additional cost of The Forbidden Room.

The feature, co-directed by Maddin’s former student and assistant Evan Johnson, is set on a submarine trapped deep underwater and is described, in typically intriguing fashion, as an ode to lost movies. The cast includes Roy Dupuis, Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier. It is produced by Turbid Pictures and Madden’s regular Winnipeg-based production company Buffalo Gal Pictures.

In practical terms, says Maddin, the feature “was all shot at the same time [as Seances] and has

many of the same actors. But it required a lot of careful planning to dovetail the different narratives together. Luckily a lot of the actors appear in multiple movie adaptations and so it was possible to make a very narrative-heavy feature film out of the basic materials.

Choosing the themes we liked most and that were present in 16 of the 33 lost movies, we were able to make a cohesive whole that fits together in a very complicated but satisfying way.”

Seances will be made available free of charge on an NFB-hosted website later in 2015, perhaps to tie in with the feature’s release. The site will offer each visitor a different assemblage of fragments from the short films, with different music, different relationships among characters and even different colour timing. As Maddin describes it, “there are so many variables in the components that we’re uploading, we can assure that whatever movie is shown it’ll never be shown again. The interactivity will produce a movie that is utterly unique and then destroy it”.

Each viewer, he adds, will experience a “randomly interrupted array of narratives that combine to form one master narrative, which will sometimes make as little sense as a dream and sometimes make as much sense as a dream”.

After wrestling with the complexities of his hybrid creation for more than two years, Maddin says he now “feels like I could do a conventional movie in my sleep”. But he suggests he has also come out of the venture with a sense of the possibilities offered by transmedia.

“I am older so a certain part of me will always think in terms of feature films,” says Maddin. “But this has been really exciting. I like making a bunch of short films and figuring out how to fit them together.

“For the longest time I was a faux pioneer; someone who manufactured things that harkened back to the early days of film history. But now, with this new media, I’m a legitimate pioneer and it’ll be interesting and exciting to s see where it goes.” n www.screendaily.com

Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room (pictured) was shot at the same time as Seance to dovetail the narratives

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February 2015 Screen International 7

profiles perspective canada

The Amina Profile Dir Sophie Deraspe This documentary, which premiered at Sundance, starts as a love story between two women and turns into a socio-political thriller of sorts, set during the Arab uprising of 2011. It explores the fine line between fantasy and reality on the internet.

Deraspe’s 2009 feature Vital Signs was a prize winner on the international festival circuit. The Amina Profile is produced by Montreal’s Esperamos Films and the National Film Board of Canada.

A sense of Perspective The ninth annual Perspective Canada Berlin programme is showcasing 14 completed Canadian features and co-productions to international buyers at the European Film Market. John Hazelton profiles each project

Int’l sales Elise Labbé, National Film Board of Canada festivals@nfb.ca

Bang Bang Baby Dir Jeffrey St Jules The 1960s-set sci-fi musical about a small-town teenager, her rock-star idol and the disturbing effects of a leak at a chemical plant won the best Canadian first feature film prize at TIFF last year. Bang Bang Baby is St Jules’ feature debut following award-winning short The Tragic Story Of Nling. Jane Levy and Justin Chatwin, stars of the US version of TV’s Shameless, and Peter Stormare, headline the feature, which is produced by Daniel Bekerman and Christina Piovesan of Scythia Films.

Cast No Shadow

Int’l sales Brady Bowen, Archstone Distribution bbowen@ archstonedistribution.com

Cast No Shadow Dir Christian Sparkes Cast No Shadow is the first feature from director Sparkes and writeractor Joel Thomas Hynes. It centres on 13-year-old Jude’s attempts to navigate life in a rundown seaside town. Trapped between his criminal father, imagined threats and his one real friendship, Jude tries to protect himself and prove his worth. The Crawlspace Films production screened last year at the Pusan and Atlantic film festivals and won prizes at the latter including best feature.

Int’l sales Marina Cordoni, Marina Cordoni Entertainment mcordoni@rogers.com Contact Chris Agoston, The Screen Asylum, chris@ thescreenasylum.com 8 Screen International February 2015

Bang Bang Baby

Chorus Dir Francois Delisle Writer-director Delisle, whose The Meteor played in the Berlinale Forum in 2013, returns to the festival with this black-and-white French-language drama, screening in the Panorama programme.

Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette (Tu Dors Nicole) and Genevieve

The Dark Stranger

Bujold star in the tale of a Montreal couple who are brought back together when the remains of their eight-year-old son are discovered a decade after the boy was kidnapped by a paedophile. Produced by Films 53/12.

Int’l sales Doc & Film International www.docandfilm.com Contact Francois Delisle, Films 53/12 fdelisle@films53-12.com

Corbo Dir Mathieu Denis Having premiered at TIFF — and featured in the festival’s recent Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival — this French-language drama produced

by Max Films Media and directed by experienced editor Denis is screening at the Berlinale in the Generation section. Corbo chronicles the transwww.screendaily.com

formation of a teenager in 1960s Quebec from pro-independence activist to radical terrorist. Denis’ directorial debut Laurentia won best international feature at the UK’s Raindance Film Festival in 2012.

and was the last person in the US to be given a justifiable homicide verdict. Eadweard is the much anticipated directorial debut of actor Rideout, who has also produced the film through his Motion58 company. Muybridge is played by rising Canadian talent Michael Eklund, who won the best supporting actor prize for The Call at British Columbia’s Leo Awards last year and whose credits include Bates Motel.

Int’l sales Be For Films pamela@beforfilms.com Contact Félize Frappier felize.frappier@maxfilms.ca

The Dark Stranger Dir Chris Trebilcock The recently completed supernatural thriller The Dark Stranger is receiving its market premiere at the EFM. Katie Findlay, whose credits include US TV shows How To Get Away With Murder and The Carrie Diaries, stars as a traumatised young artist who draws a graphic novel about an ominous figure pursuing a lonely girl across a fairytale landscape. Before long, the Dark Stranger, played by veteran Canadian actor Stephen McHattie, starts to appear in real life.

Chorus

The Forbidden Room Dirs Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson

Eadweard

Int’l sales Etchie Stroh, Moonstone Entertainment etchie@ moonstonefilms.com Contact Glen Wood, Viddywell Films glen@viddywellfilms.com

Eadweard Dir Kyle Rideout Making its market debut at Berlin, this psychological drama is the story of 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who photographed naked and deformed subjects, murdered his wife’s lover

Contact Josh Epstein edgesvancouver@gmail.com

Screening in Berlin’s Forum section following its premiere at Sundance, The Forbidden Room is the latest feature from Canadian auteur Maddin, whose credits include The Saddest Music In The World and My Winnipeg. Co-directed by Evan Johnson and produced by Turbid Pictures and Buffalo Gal Pictures, the film is an ode to the forgotten movies of the silent era. It follows a submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon and a battalion of child soldiers as they make their way towards progressive ideas on life and love. The cast includes Mathieu Amalric, Roy Dupuis and Geraldine Chaplin.

Int’l sales Charlotte Mickie, Mongrel International charlotte@ mongrelmedia.com

Hellions

Hellions Dir Bruce McDonald Horror thriller Hellions, directed by well-known Canadian film-maker McDonald and written by Pascal Trottier, premiered at Sundance.

The cast includes Robert Patrick and Rossif Sutherland, and it was produced by Whizbang Films. The horror film tells the story of an unsuspecting teenage girl who opens her door to a group of strange trick-or-treaters on Halloween night and ends up defending her body and soul from the relentless ‘Hellions’.

The Amina Profile

Int’l sales Nate Bolotin, XYZ Films info@xyzfilms.com Contact Sonya Di Rienzo, Whizbang Films sonya@ whizbangfilms.com »

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February 2015 Screen International 9

profiles perspective canada

NOT SHORT ON TALENT The 10 short films in the Berlin edition of Telefilm Canada’s promotional initiative include world premieres, festival prize-winners and shorts connected to 2015 Canadian Berlinale Talent participants.

Profiles by John Hazelton

Body Parts Dir Naomi Jaye For Elodie, the bathtub seems as good a place as any to discuss her boyfriend’s personal habits. Jaye is a Berlinale Talent participant.

Cycle Dir Raquel Sancinetti Loneliness in the modern age is depicted in this animation about a man and a woman surrounded by the overwhelming noise of electronics and consumerism.

The Hearing Dir Russell Ratt-Brascoupe Native Canadian film-maker RattBrascoupe, who lost his hearing at the age of 13, turns the camera on himself. He copes well with his disability, but there is one statement he would like to hear above all others.

The short won the achievement in documentary prize at the Air Canada enRoute Film Festival in 2014.

Hole Dir Martin Edralin A drama about Billy, a middleaged disabled man and classical

W-A-L-K

10 Screen International February 2015

music lover who longs for intimacy.

Producer Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith is a Berlinale Talent participant. Hole won the short film jury prize at Locarno International Film Festival in 2014.

Le Petit Homme Dir Serge Bordeleau A young Algonquin man who has a difficult relationship with both his son and the wider community encounters the legendary ‘little man’, a supreme ‘trickster’ who enjoys tormenting those who stray too far from the path of the ancients. Shot in a Native Canadian community with a local cast.

Les Enfants Sauvages Dir Renaud Lessard During an Indian summer, a canoe transports Max and Ariane down the river. Escapees from the city, they know nothing about one another but they share a plan. The short won the achievement in cinematography prize from the Air Canada enRoute Film Festival in 2014.

Light Dir Yassmina Karajah Devastated by the death of his newborn son, a Lebanese man living in an adopted country is challenged by his mother’s request that he perform Islamic pre-burial rituals in the hospital. Karajah’s fiction film was selected for TIFF Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival 2014.

Les Enfants Sauvages

Hole

Nan Lou Kanaval Dir Kaveh Nabatian A hallucinatory documentary journey into the Haitian carnival created in collaboration with the director’s students from the Ciné Institute in Jacmel, Haiti. Nabatian is a Berlinale Talent Participant.

W-A-L-K Dir Anna Sikorski

Le Petit Homme

During a lazy Montreal summer day, pre-teen Clara decides to master the art of walking in high-heel shoes.

Producer Hany Ouichou is a Berlinale Talent participant.

The Weatherman And The Shadowboxer Dirs Randall William Cook, Randall Lloyd Okita Live action and digital animation blend to portray two brothers with conflicting memories of their shared past. The film won the best Canadian short film prize at TIFF in 2014.

Nan Lou Kanaval

Body Parts

The Weatherman And The Shadowboxer

www.screendaily.com

Love In The Time Of Civil War Dir Rodrigue Jean Jean’s Lost Song won the best Canadian feature award at TIFF in 2008.

His film Love In The Time Of Civil War (L’amour Au Temps De La Guerre Civile), which screened at TIFF last year, is a drama about a young addict who sells his body in Montreal’s Centre-Sud district. Marginalised by society but hostage to its market logic, the young man and his companions live in defiant solitude from one fix to the next. Transmar Film produces.

Love In The Time Of Civil War

Int’l sales Reel Suspects www.reelsuspects.com; Anne Paré, Les Films Du 3 Mars apare@f3m.ca

Love Project Dir Carole Laure The fourth feature film from acclaimed actor-director Laure is a French-language drama about a group of young artists who live in the fast lane and whose relationships test the boundaries of sexual identity, romance and sex. The ensemble cast includes Benoit McGinnis, Céline Bonnier and Magalie Lépine-Blondeau. Love Project premiered at Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and is produced by Lyla Films.

Int’l sales Anick Poirier, Séville International bmohr@filmsseville.com

La Passion d’Augustine Dir Léa Pool Pool — a Berlin prize winner in 1999 for Set Me Free — directs this

The Price We Pay www.screendaily.com

Turbo Kid

drama, which is making its market debut at the EFM. La Passion d’Augustine, co-written by Pool with Marie Vien, is about a small convent and music school that trains prizewinning piano players. The drama turns on the arrival of Mother Augustine’s niece.

Int’l sales Anick Poirier, Séville International bmohr@filmsseville.com

The Price We Pay Dir Harold Crooks Writer Crooks follows his directing debut Surviving Progress with a documentary exploring how offshore financiers and the technology giants

may be eroding the foundations of the democratic state. The story is told by crusading journalists, tax justice campaigners and former finance and technology industry insiders. The Price We Pay premiered at TIFF and screened in the festival’s Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival. It is produced by Inform-Action.

Int’l sales Katia M Briand, Filmoption International katia@filmoption.com

Turbo Kid Dirs Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell A genre mash-up that premiered at Sundance, Turbo Kid is the tale of a lonely orphan who scavenges a postapocalyptic environment. When the Kid meets a mysterious girl and becomes the target of the devastated world’s sadistic leader, he is forced to confront his fears. Writer-directors Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell all make their feature debuts on the EMA Films production.

Int’l sales Patrick Ewald, Epic Picture Group patrick@ epic-pictures.com Contact Anne-Marie Gélinas, EMA s Films amg@emafilms.com ■ February 2015 Screen International 11

PROFILES BUZZ TITLES

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Hyena Road

Dir Atom Egoyan Egoyan follows last year’s Cannes Competition entry The Captive with a contemporary drama about a man who discovers the Nazi guard who murdered his family 70 years earlier is living in the US under an assumed identity. He sets out to find the man and deliver long-delayed justice. Christopher Plummer leads a cast that includes Martin Landau, Dean Norris, Bruno Ganz, Jürgen Prochnow and Heinz Lieven. Robert Lantos and Ari Lantos are producing the project, which is in post-production.

Canada in the spotlight What are the most exciting new Canadian projects of 2015? John Hazelton reports

Int’l sales IM Global imglobalfilms.com

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Room The Diary Of An Old Man Dir Bernard Emond The world premiere of the Frenchlanguage drama The Diary Of An Old Man (Le Journal d’Un Vieil Homme) is the opening film of the inaugural Critics’ Week Berlin. Based on Anton Chekhov’s A Dreary Story, Paul Savoie stars as a famous physician who is stricken by a fatal illness. He also comes the realisation he is powerless to cure the unhappiness of his adopted daughter, an actress in her 30s, who he loves above all else. Bernadette Payeur produced the film for co-operative ACPAV and Séville will distribute in Canada.

Int’l sales Séville International sevilleinternational@filmsseville. com

Guibord S’en Va-t-en Guerre Dir Philippe Falardeau Monsieur Lazhar writerdirector Falardeau, who made his US debut last year with The Good Lie,, returns to French-Canadian filmmaking with this political comedy, now in production. It stars Patrick Huard and Suzanne Clément and is about an independent politician who holds 12 Screen International

Remember

the balance of power on a critical foreign policy decision. He tours his electoral constituency to consult with his voters but ultimately finds himself struggling with his conscience. The film is produced by Luc Déry and Kim McCraw for micro_ scope. Les Films Christal will release in Canada.

Int’l sales Films Distribution info@filmsdistribution.com

Hyena Road Dir Paul Gross Shot in Canada and Jordan and now in post-production, Afghanistan-set war film Hyena Road navigates the murky world of modern warfare through the stories of three men: a sniper who does not think of his targets as human, an intelligence officer and a legendary Mujahideen warrior. Rossif Sutherland, Clark Johnson, Christine Horne and Allan Hawco star for writerdirector-producer Gross, who also plays a leading role. Hyena Road is produced by Niv Fichman and Phyllis Laing for Rhombus Media and Triple 7 Films in association with Buffalo Gal Pictures. Ele-

vation Pictures has Canadian rights.

Int’l sales WTFilms dimitri. stephanides@gmail.com

Origin Of The World Dir Kim Nguyen Writer-director Nguyen and producers Pierre Even and MarieClaude Poulin, who collaborated on foreign-language Oscar nominee War Witch, reunite for this diptych, set in Montreal and Morocco. The drama follows a drone operator who has a crisis of conscience when he realises the true impact of his mission protecting Middle East oil fields. Item 7 principals Even and Poulin are in the final stages of financing the $7m project as an official co-production with French partner La Chauve-Souris. The film, to be distributed in Canada by eOne, is set to shoot this summer.

Int’l sales Indie Sales info@indiesales.com

Dir Lenny Abrahamson Adapted by Emma Donoghue from her acclaimed novel of the same name, Room tells its story through five-year-old Jack, born and raised in a small room by his loving mother. As Jack’s curiosity builds, his mother knows the room cannot contain either her or her son indefinitely. Brie Larson (Short Term 12), Joan Allen and William H Macy head the cast of the Canada-Ireland-UK co-production from Irish lead producer Element Pictures and Canada’s No Trace Camping in association with Telefilm Canada, Film4 and the Irish Film Board. Room shot at Pinewood Toronto Studios and on location in Toronto, and is in post-production in Dublin. It will be distributed by Elevation Pictures in Canada and A24 in the US. Int’l sales FilmNation Entertainment info@filmnation. s com ■

Room www.screendaily.com