Running as a column for Playback’s three special editions for the Toronto International Film Festival, pitch tracked new projects. Following are some of the highlights. tiff was winding up at Playback press time.

*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

*Last Night editor directing A Girl Is A Girl

Reginald Harkema, a Vancouver-based, Genie-nominated editor (Last Night, Hard Core Logo, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs) will direct the feature A Girl Is A Girl for Christine Haebler’s Cadence Entertainment.

Production is slated for February in Vancouver and Citytv has prebought the film in a deal inked at the festival. Diane Boehme, manager of independent production at City, made the prebuy. ‘Now we’ve got that first card for the foundation of our financing house of cards,’ says Harkema.

With Haebler executive producing, Christina Margellos will produce Harkema’s script, cowritten with Angus Fraser, who received a Gemini nomination as cowriter on Lynne Stopkewich’s Kissed.

A Girl Is A Girl concerns protagonist Adam’s search for true love in a milieu of anorexia, peer pressure, date rape, pot smoking, supermodels, alcohol, grrl punk and ecstasy.

Besides trying to shore up financing and a distribution deal while at the Toronto International Film Festival, Harkema says he has been consulting with David Cronenberg on how to shoot nude scenes. Andy Hoffman