Pitch is tracking new projects for various directing, producing and acting talent attending this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

*Gerrie and Louise – Gunnarsson’s feature

A year behind the critical success of Gerrie and Louise, Sturla Gunnarsson is at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with a special screening of his adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and a couple of irons in the fire.

Top of mind is adapting the award-winning documentary Gerrie and Louise to a feature film and Scorn, a feature written by Andrew Ray Bersains and based on the real life story of Darrin Huenemen.

Capitalizing on Gunnarsson’s ability to find the drama in history and biography, Scorn, produced with the support of the cbc, is in preproduction, with shooting scheduled to start in January or February.

The story follows the then 16-year-old Huenemen who hired hit men to have his mother and grandmother killed in Victoria, b.c.

The Gerrie and Louise feature script is a work in progress, with Gunnarsson currently in negotiations with a high-profile South African writer he won’t name until the contract is signed. And although he won’t identify who, Gunnarsson has a meeting booked at the festival with a British star who is interested in playing Louise.

The budget for the film is currently running $7 million to $10 million, although if the intended talent signs on, the numbers could look more like pocket change.

As for the original documentary, Gerrie and Louise, winner of an International Emmy and the M. Joan Chalmers Documentarian Award, is up for the Donald Brinton Award at the Gemini Awards (Oct. 3-5).

For the record, Gerrie and Louise is the South Africa-set love story told against the background of apartheid in the middle of its war crime tribunal. Louise Flanagan, a journalist and one of the tribunal’s investigators, and Colonel Gerrie Hugo, a former hit squad commander, were married, leaving Hugo turning his back on his former life.

Gunnarsson says Gerrie has watched the film and found it difficult. Louise hasn’t watched it yet. However, Desmond Tutu saw it and sent a wonderful note. The film has yet to find a South African broadcaster willing to telecast it. Gerrie and Louise screened at TIFF ’97. Allison Vale

*Ciccoritti prepping The Life Before This

Director Jerry Ciccoritti will be splitting his time between tiff and the premiere of his film Boy Meets Girl and prep on his new $2.5-million feature The Life Before This for Alliance Communications.

The Life Before This, produced by Alayna Frank, is a dramatic art film about a group of people who die just after the opening credits. The body of the story is a flashback to the decisions they made that day. Traders star David Cubbitt is reportedly interested in a part in the film.

Also on tap for late January is the production of Wives of Bath with Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films. The film follows three private school girls in 1972 exploring various aspects of gender and identity. Behaviour Communications has Canadian distribution rights.

Looking ahead, besides the option on Paul’s Case, Ciccoritti has the option for one more year on the Nancy Baker vampire novel The Night Inside. Semi Challas is writing the script. No bites yet for a producer, but the ‘vampire thang’ is coming back and the festival may yield interest. Ciccoritti has bankable experience directing Psycho Girls and Graveyard Shift, circa the ’80s.

On the topic of Boy Meets Girl, Ciccoritti says he originally took the assignment simply for the work factor, but that the $3.5-million film became ‘the most personal thing I’ve done since Paris, France.’ Film Tonic has the Canadian rights.

Ciccoritti is up for a Gemini again this year for his directing work on Straight Up. Since the 1993 Paris, France, he’s won four Geminis for best director for his work with Straight Up, the cbc mow Net Worth, an episode of Alliance’s Due South and an episode of Cat Walk. Allison Vale

*The Herd’s Lynch working on first feature

Word is The Herd director Peter Lynch is working on his first feature film based a wwii diary written by his grandfather, who is from Liverpool.

Lynch is also in second draft stage of ascript for a drama called The Carp Man. The feature-length comic love story begins with a man quitting his job as a city planner and spending his days fishing for carp on Lake Ontario. There he meets a woman who dreams of becoming an architect and believes if she moves to the romantic setting of Venice her life will come together.

As they fish for carp, Lynch says the pair discover the powerful world of the imagination and find magic in the ordinary world of life in Toronto.

Lynch is seeking a producer for the project.

The director is also writing a screenplay titled Shooting at Germans, which he describes as ‘a personal novel’ based upon his grandfather’s wwii diaries and passion for soccer, the war itself, and historic soccer matches such as when England lost the cup to Germany in 1991. In the film, the soccer field becomes a metaphor for the far more complex terrain of life, explains Lynch, who plans to direct and produce the film.

Lawrence Green, whose award-winning short film Reconstruction screened at tiff, is associate producer. A budget figure has not been locked down.

Meanwhile, Nicholas McKinney, cowriter of The Herd, is working on a feature film project, The Radnik. The documentary explores how Yugoslavians who immigrated to Ontario were lured back to their home country by the Yugoslavia government with promises of money and prosperity. Instead, their money and cars were seized upon return. The Radnik is the name of the boat that was sent for them.

McKinney is currently also writing and segment producing Michael Moore’s upcoming anti-big-business series Michael Moore’s World. Cheryl Binning

*Ransen wraps Shegalla

Margaret’s Museum director Mort Ransen will complete production on Shegalla Sept. 21 in Keremeos, b.c. Directed by Ransen and starring Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich and Graham Greene, Shegalla is about a self-destructive sixtysomething non-Native woman who lives on an Indian reserve.

Ransen’s company Ranfilm Productions is also in post-production on West of Sarajevo, a film about the tensions between a Serb and Muslim living in Vancouver which was before cameras this spring. Ian Edwards

*Dunnison’s Stuff

Independent producer/director/writer James Dunnison is scheduled to begin principal photography this month on Stuff, a comic romantic thriller described as the story ‘of a guy whose wildest fantasies come true and become his darkest nightmare.’ The $50,000 feature is shooting on digital video with the intent of a 35mm film blowup.

The film, which is privately financed, boasts a strong music talent contingent, including coproducer Roma Khanna, manager of business and legal affairs at Sony Music Canada.

Dunnison’s wife Rebecca, who cowrote the script with him, used to be the lead singer of punk band Lick The Pole, which was featured in Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo. Stuff’s star Max Danger is the keyboard player for Toronto’s The Deadly Snakes and Pursuit of Happiness lead Moe Berg has a cameo role.

A former writer in residence at the Canadian Film Center, Dunnison says he’s been approached by a number of music agents to discuss soundtrack possibilities. Vancouver-based Bill Morrison will lens.