ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTION – 3 SAISONS

Jim Donovan remembers a particular moment while shooting a scene from 3 Saisons on the streets of Montreal. It was the middle of January, the temperature was -30C and his crew had trouble finding a restaurant base to film a scene.

‘We were always just trying to get by with whatever we could get away with,’ he recalls, and finally a greasy spoon opened its doors to his cast and crew. A dozen orders of French fries and coffee later and the scene was complete. ‘It threw me back to my college years,’ he says, noting the film was made on a shoestring budget of $35,000. ‘It’s do or die, but are we making this film or are we not?’ he asked. ‘That story to me epitomizes what it was like to make this film, because there’s a hundred more stories like that.’

Donovan made the move to Toronto this past December, calling it ‘the hub for connecting to the greater world. It’s fun to come to a city and be new again,’ he adds.

The Montreal native began his directorial career with music videos in the ’80s and moved on to episodic TV series in the ’90s (Instant Star, Naked Josh). 3 Saisons immediately followed his first feature film, Pure (2005), which was released theatrically in Quebec and on TV across Canada.

Now that he’s made Toronto his home, Donovan is in talks with producers and says he has a few irons in the fire.