Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson (Final Offer, Diary of Evelyn Lau), who is at tiff this year with Gerrie and Louise, has a full slate of projects in the works. Between premiering his documentary and attending a few functions, he has been posting his Showtime/Dufferin Gate cable feature Torre, starring Paul Sorvino and Robert Loggia. Torre just wrapped principal photography a week ago in Toronto and Ron Sanders (Dead Ringers, Crash) is handling the edit.

Gunnarsson is preparing to leave for India as soon as picture is locked on Torre to shoot the feature Such A Long Journey, based on the Rohinton Mistry novel of the same name. A Canada/u.k. coproduction with Toronto-based The Film Works and the u.k’s British Screen, Such A Long Journey will be an eight-week shoot in Bombay, with the post taking place in Toronto.

The script for the film is penned by Sunni Tooparvala (Mississippi Masala).

Next spring, Gunnarsson is hoping to be reunited with Toronto’s Barna-Alper (Diana Kilmury: Teamster) to direct a $3.5 million to $5 million budgeted mow/potential feature, titled Scorn. Produced by Maryke McEwan (Diary Of Evelyn Lau) and Chris Bruyere, with Laszlo Barna serving as exec producer, Andrew Rai Brezans’ (Straight Up) script tells the story of a 15-year-old Victoria, b.c. teenager named Darren Huenemann who had his friends murder his doting mother and grandmother.

Barna-Alper’s head of development David Weaver is pitching the project during the festival as a ‘suburban Lord of the Flies,’ or ‘Taxi Driver Junior,’ while Gunnarsson describes it as a cross between Heavenly Creatures and River’s Edge.

Weaver says he and Gunnarsson will be looking for a British coproducer for Scorn, as Huenemann is apparently obsessed with works like I Claudius and all things British.

Weaver will be meeting with Miramax execs during the festival to discuss a potential deal for Scorn, but also to pitch writer/director Andrew Ainsworth’s project Hate. The low-budget feature ($750,000 to $1 million) tells the darkly comic tale of a neo-Nazi skinhead who is suffering from amnesia and embarks on a road trip to his narrow-minded hometown with an East-Indian man who he has recently assaulted.

* Natali’s Mutants

Vincenzo Natali’s feature film debut, and Perspective Canada entry, Cube, has been described as ‘a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare.’ Natali plans to continue to focus on the subject of containment with his next project Mutants. Natali says he figures he should take advantage of the attention he’s getting at tiff and pitch the project dealing with the controversial and topical subject of genetics.

Natali bills the feature script (cowritten with Toinette Terry) as a love story that picks up where Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein left off. Mutants examines the life of character Clive Collins, who is ‘the rock star of scientists’ and is leading the vanguard of genetic manipulators, splicing human dna to form hybrid species.

Problems arise when Clive finds out that sex and science don’t mix as he begins acting out his most hidden and repressed desires with a bastardized genetic mutation that he has created.

Natali says Mutants will be modestly budgeted at around $5 million to $6 million, with an ‘art direction-heavy’ feel, much like his Canadian Film Center Feature Film Project-produced Cube. Natali also mentions that Cube star and friend David Hewlett would be perfect for the role of the scientist.

Meanwhile, Cube coproducer Mehra Meh is looking for financing for his next project, Fishface. The Sue Maheux script follows an urban tough girl’s banishment to a coastal n.s. fishing village and her relationship with a mythical sea creature, who is the ghost of an ancient mariner.