Word is quickly spreading about ‘no-budget’ indie film champion Peter Broderick’s new feature finishing fund, which is worth up to us$100,000 per project for films in the post stage.

Backed by a grant from the Independent Film Channel in the u.s., Next Wave Films is an initiative for emerging filmmakers with projects budgeted under us$200,000. Broderick, vp of the South Carolina-based Independent Feature Project/West, is president and founder of Next Wave, and has made a stop at the Toronto festival to publicize the six-month-old fund and scout for potential projects.

The finishing money is available for up to four fiction or non-fiction English-language features per year that have completed principal photography. The ifc takes basic cable rights in the u.s. (the cable channel reaches 10.5 million American homes) as well as home video and pay-tv rights, and Next Wave works with the filmmaker to maximize distribution internationally.

‘This is an international effort to launch the careers of the most talented new English-language directors,’ says Broderick.

Alongside the opening of the finishing fund, the ifc has launched a production arm with an annual budget of under us$10 million to provide investment financing for three us$1-million to us$5-million budgeted films, with a per project cap of us$2 million. John Sayles’ Men With Guns, which made its world premiere at tiff, is the first project for IFC Productions.

Unlike Next Wave, filmmakers must have feature credits to their name. Caroline Kaplan, ifc director of programming and production, handles development for the new company, and Jonathan Sehring, senior vp of programming and production at the cable channel, oversees the new initiatives.

Beyond front-end financing opportunities, ifc acquires between 350 and 450 indie features per year, and acquisitions manager George Lentz and Sehring are at the Toronto festival shopping for product.

Next Wave is primarily geared to first- or second-time filmmakers, but Broderick is willing to talk to established producers who are having difficulty putting the final pieces of financing together. Although Santa Monica-based Next Wave has a number of projects from Canada, the u.s. and Australia under evaluation, Broderick has not committed any financing as yet.

Broderick is scouting for features where the director’s point of view and individual style put a strong stamp on the project. ‘It’s when you see a film and think this filmmaker could direct the phone book and it would be exciting,’ he says.

Theatrical distribution potential is another must. The features vying for Next Wave financing need to generate strong enough interest among u.s. and international distributors that the companies are willing to pay out advances. Next Wave shares in the equity based on the ‘last money in, first money out’ principle, says Broderick, whereby its investment at the front end is returned through distribution advances, which subsequently frees up money for refunneling into new projects.

In the worst-case scenario when a film fails to find distribution, Broderick says Next Wave may take on a limited theatrical release themselves in key markets.

As for the types of minuscule-budgeted indies that stand a chance of landing distribution deals, Broderick says uniqueness and a distinct voice are crucial. Provocative films also have an advantage, he says, pointing to the current success of In The Company of Men as an example. ‘It opened at Sundance, caused a controversy and is now doing extremely well in theaters in the u.s.,’ he says. ‘It’s not a genre film on a low budget. It’s distinctive and original.

‘These are films the filmmakers have lived. They reflect a culture, whether it’s a subculture or a part of life that we haven’t seen portrayed that way,’ continues Broderick. ‘It comes out of the filmmaker’s own experience. It may be a drama or a comedy or romance, but there are nuances of a particular culture that makes it authentic. It’s a movie the filmmaker had to make, not some synthetic creation.’

Broderick helped galvanize the ultra low-budget movement as a writer for Filmmaker magazine and has been attending tiff for the past seven years as a freelance journalist. As funding sources for features have dwindled on the Canadian landscape, he is observing a direct correlation with the rise of low, low-budget indie filmmaking throughout the country. The attention garnered by Gary Burns’ The Suburbanators, John L’Ecuyer’s Curtis’s Charm and last year’s festival hit Kissed from Lynne Stopkewich has shown filmmakers that low-budget indies are a viable model to follow, he says.

‘I’m not saying it’s easy to make films for a small amount of money, but there are advantages for filmmakers in this situation. If they are careful with the types of resources they use and write the script with these resources in mind, filmmakers can have all the creative freedom they want within these parameters – which is what happened in the case of the most successful low-budget films like Clerks.’

In the u.s., Broderick is seeing increased production activity over the past year on the ultra low-budget scene, as evidenced by the last Sundance festival, which had roughly 700 fictional low-budget features submitted.

However, the distribution opportunities in the u.s. are tough, he says, and while the production of indie films grows steadily, the number of films picked up for theatrical distribution remains constant.

The launch of Next Wave was partly a response to the fact that the better funded indie distributors are not interested in good movies that make a small profit and are only going after those with a potentially huge upside and box office potential, says Broderick. Generally, he says, movies under $5 million are being ignored by the likes of Miramax, Fine Line and Sony Pictures Classics.

The number of smaller distributors continues stable, but the challenge remains of getting indie films noticed without the advantages of huge marketing budgets.

Film festival exposure, particularly at Sundance and Toronto, are key launch pads for low-budget indies, he says. Working with the press, bringing in the right actors and crew, and framing the movie to audiences and journalists to make it stand out among the numerous features vying for screen space is all part of the festival strategy Broderick works on for Next Wave-supported films.

The finishing fund also offers filmmakers access to its network of advisors – including Sayles, Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Atom Egoyan, Mina Shum and Stopkewich – who can offer a wealth of experience on the low-budget scene to help new filmmakers make good creative and business decisions.