Although Motion International is buying and selling at this year’s festival table as a new player, it’s a company with a well-established pedigree.

Coscient Astral Distribution announced in late August it had changed its name to Motion International to create a distinct new identity for the company, which was formed after Coscient acquired the distribution and development divisions of Astral Communications in the fall of 1996 and integrated them with Coscient arm Allegro Films Distribution. Original plans were to wait until the end of the year for the name change, to allow suppliers and partners a comfort period in dealing with the new company, but with all the pieces in place ahead of schedule, there was no need to wait.

Stephen Greenberg is acting as the company’s distribution president. The rest of the senior management team consists of Jean Bureau, vp, international; Dan Lyon, vp of distribution and marketing based in Toronto, and his Montreal counterpart Andre Paquette; and Mike Murphy, senior vp, Fox Motion Television.

Motion has brought three films to the festival as a distributor, including The Assignment, produced by Coscient company Allegro Films and directed by Christian Duguay. The thriller stars Ben Kingsley, Donald Sutherland and Aidan Quinn, who plays two characters, including terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Lyon says expectation is high in advance of the film’s festival screening.

Distribution of the film was prearranged as part of a cofinancing deal with Columbia TriStar, which will handle distribution of The Assignment outside of Canada. Allegro had signed a deal with Columbia TriStar’s Triumph Films predating Astral’s involvement with Coscient and the u.s. company will also service the theatrical release in English Canada. The film is being released in Canada on Sept. 26.

Motion is also distributing Heaven’s Burning, an Australian film Motion director of theatrical distribution Jim Murphy acquired from Beyond Films at Cannes. The film, directed by Craig Lahiff, features ascendant star of L.A. Confidential Russell Crowe and Youki Kudoh (Mystery Train). Murphy calls it the kind of well-made action film that meets many of Motion’s desiderata, and he says at tiff the company is looking for something different, not a ‘standard relationship film.’

Motion has a team of five people who are screening the roughly 25 English-language and 15 foreign-language films the company has shortlisted. Murphy says the search is on for an interesting project, big or small, but one which in some way fits within the tight constraints of revenue reality.

‘We know some of the films that will be available we’ll be bidding against some of the American minis for,’ says Murphy, citing the recent deal which saw October Films acquire worldwide rights for Robert Duvall’s Apostle for $6 million. ‘If you break down the world market, we’re basically a 4% to 5% market share; that would have meant we would have had to bid $300,000 to compete, but in reality we probably would have had to bid a lot more for Canadian rights. It’s an expensive proposition.’

Murphy says similar economic considerations also make English-language films a preference this year, pointing to what he perceives as a slump in foreign-language titles, the limited time and response to foreign titles on tv, and the difficulty of profiting from subtitled video releases.

Motion is also at the festival as distributor for the Quebec/Swiss coproduction Clandestins (Stowaways), directed by Montreal’s Denis Chouinard and Switzerland-born Nicolas Wadimoff, as well as The Myth of Fingerprints from James Schamus’ Good Machine Productions, directed by Bart Freundlich.

Myth looks at a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving dinner and features an ensemble cast with Julianne Moore, Roy Scheider and er cutie Noah Wyle. The film screened at Sundance where Motion made the deal with Sony Classics for the film’s release here. Murphy says an early October release is planned.

Clandestins centers on a group of six refugees who stow away in a storage container on an ocean freighter bound for Canada and their struggle to survive and avoid the horror of being discovered.

A January release is planned for Clandestins and Heaven’s Burning is expected to be released in November.