The promises of this year’s edition of the Montreal World Film Festival, the 23rd, include homegrown distributors Lions Gate and Alliance Atlantis squaring off in official competition, legendary Cinepix movie duo, John Dunning and Andre Link picking up a career achievement award, a screening of the Denis Heroux box-office classic Valeri, and French movie stars Gerard Depardieu and Carole Bouquet joining Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie at two of this year’s gala festival screenings.

Nineteen films from 16 countries will compete for the Grand Prix des Ameriques at WFF ’99, with Patricia Rozema’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (Alliance Atlantis Releasing/Miramax Films) and Jean Beaudin’s Souvenirs intimes (Films Lions Gate) among the contenders.

This year’s festival has programmed 288 films from 68 countries, 19 tv movies and 60 student films in 10 categories, including the official competition. The competition opens with a gala world premiere of Mansfield Park, Aug. 27.

Two Canadian movies are in competition, Beaudin’s Souvenirs intimes and Louis Belanger’s feature debut Post Mortem (Film Tonic).

Other entries in the ’99 competition include master Italian director Ettore Scola’s Le Diner (Films Lions Gate); Un Pont Entre Deux Rives/The Bridge (Films Lions Gate), codirected by Depardieu and Frederic Aubertin and starring Carole Bouquet in a bittersweet love story set in 1962 Normandy; Postmen in the Mountains from Chinese director Huo Jianqi; The Color of God from ’97 Grand Prix des Ameriques and best foreign film Oscar winner Majid Majidi (Les Enfants du Ciel); and an immigrant story situated in New York, Which Side Eden from Czech Republic director Vojtech Jasny.

The competition also features Carlos Saura’s Spain/Italy coproduction Goya in Bordeaux, starring Francisco Rabal, with helmer Saura slated to attend the festival; Nils Gaup’s coproduction Misery Harbour (Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm); French director Pierre Jolivet’s Ma Petite Entreprise; and u.k. director Eric Styles’ debut story of a young woman’s passion and English countryside sensibilities circa 1958, Dreaming of Joseph Lees (Fox Searchlight).

Also competing are South Korean director Cho Moon-jin’s war-zone tale, Until We Meet; Spanish director Mario Camus’ The City of Marvels, set against the backdrop of the Universal Exposition in Barcelona in 1888; and Hampton Fancher’s The Minus Man (Blackwatch International), a dark comedy about an introvert who euthanizes an unhappy asthmatic drug addict (the second u.s. film in competition, the other being Miramax u.k.’s Mansfield Park).

Fourteen short films are entered in official competition, including Alexander Petrov’s animated mini-feature The Old Man and the Sea (Productions Pascal Blais), a $5-million Canada/Japan/Russia coproduction; and two National Film Board animation shorts – Torill Kove’s My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts, a Canada/Norway coproduction, and Eugene Federenko and Rose Newlove’s timely Village of Idiots, based on playwright John Lazarus’ adaptation of a classic Jewish parable.

Official jury

This year’s impressive official competition jury, the best in years according to local film critics, is headed by Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, a Cannes Film Festival winner and star of various Ingmar Bergman films, including Wild Strawberries, Persona and Brink of Life.

Joining Andersson are: German director Percy Adlon (Salmonberries, Bagdad Cafe), Quebec actress Charlotte Laurier (Les Bons Debarras, 2 Secondes), Italian director Mario Monicelli (Big Deal, The Great War), Irish director Pat O’Connor (Cal, Dancing at Lughnasa), Irish actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) and Argentinian director Fernando Solanas (The Hour of the Furnaces, Tangos, The Exile of Gardel).

wff is the only category ‘a’ competitive film festival in North America recognized by fiapf.

The Bone Collector

Topping the Hollywood contingent at wff is the Universal Pictures suspense thriller The Bone Collector, which will have its world premiere Aug. 29 in the festival’s World Greats (formerly Hors Concours) section.

The film was shot on location in Montreal and New York late last year and stars Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, with megastar Washington in a wheelchair playing an embittered retired forensic cop on the trail of a serial killer. Director Phillip Noyce and producers Martin Bregman, Louis A. Stroller and Michael S. Bregman are also slated to attend the wff premiere.

Canadian distribution

Among the features on the wff screening agenda with Canadian and/or North American distribution are:

* Alliance Atlantis Releasing: Sundance festival entry Happy, Texas (Miramax Films); high-profile doc Get Bruce! (Miramax); the bittersweet romance Guinevere, starring Canadian actress Sarah Polley and Irish leading man Stephen Rea; That’s the Way I Like It (Miramax); Phorpa (Fine Line); East Is East, Fucking Amal, likely to go to theatres renamed as Show Me Love; Catherine Breillat’s troubling and definitely hot French film, Romance, starring Caroline Ducey; and Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore’s touching period piece Legend of 1900

* Blackwatch Releasing: The War Zone and popular Sundance entry The Autumn Heart

* K. Films Amerique: Propaganda

* Doc specialist Cinema Libre: Black Lake, La Sombrueuse

* Columbia TriStar: Jeff Abugov’s doc The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Man

* Taxi International: Rabbit Punch and Anderson Unbound

* Trimark: The Last September

* Aska Film Distribution: Roshell Bissett’s strange bed-and-breakfast tale, Winter Lily

* Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre: L’Offrande, Island/L’Ile

* Film Tonic: French director Patrice Leconte’s tale of love and luck lost, La Fille sur le Pont

It seems likely much of the North American acquisition activity this year will key on the surprising number of higher-profile English- and foreign-language – European and Asian – titles without distribution.

More international movies

Twenty-five features unspool in the higher-profile World Greats section, including Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanite, a controversial multiple winner at this year’s Cannes festival; Raoul Ruiz’s imaginative Proustian deathbed tale, Time Regained; Manoel de Oliveira’s La Lettre (The Letter); and French director Bertrand Tavernier’s story of a thoughtful kindergarten headmaster facing hard times, Ca Commence Aujourd’hui (It All Starts Today). Tavernier is slated to attend wff.

Other World Greats screenings include Aussie director Paul Cox’s 19th century tale of leprosy and devotion, Molokai: The True Story of Father Damien; Portuguese director Joao Cesar Monteiro’s passionate comedy God’s Wedding; the Werner Herzog biopic on friend/tres eccentric actor Klaus Kinski, My Best Friend; Israeli director Amos Gitai’s Kadosh; and Yasushi Sakaguchi’s imax doc entry on the Yangtze River, Chang Jiang – The Great River of China.

Both Chang Jiang, the first Chinese imax movie, and Petrov’s The Old Man and the Sea, selected earlier this summer to open the BFI-Imax Theatre in London, Eng., will be screened at the new Famous Players: Paramount-Imax theatre in downtown Montreal.

Souvenirs intimes,

Post Mortem

Beaudin’s Souvenirs intimes is very freely adapted from Monique Proulx’s novel L’Homme a la fenetre and was scripted by Proulx and the director.

The film tells the moving story of a handicapped painter and his entourage and stars James Hyndman, Pascale Bussieres, Louise Portal, Yves Jacques and Marcel Sabourin.

Beaudin won praise for earlier festival features including Mario and J.A. Martin, photographe, but Souvenirs is his first feature since 1992’s Being at Home with Claude.

Souvenirs intimes was produced by Jean-Roch Marcotte of Productions du Regard and opens theatrically Aug. 28 on one Montreal screen (Cineplex Odeon – Quartier Latin). The following week, Sept. 3, the film opens in Montreal and across the province on Sept. 10, for an anticipated total of 10 or 12 prints, including an English subtitled print (Famous Players – Faubourg).

Souvenirs intimes is also screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 9-18).

Belanger’s low-budget feature debut, Post Mortem, was produced by Lorraine Dufour of Coop Video de Montreal and stars Gabriel Arcand, Sylvie Moreau, Helene Loiselle and young Sarah Lecomte-Bergeron. It’s billed as an ironic mother-daughter story of hope and (‘mother by day, bad girl by night’) excessive ambition.

Distrib Film Tonic has scheduled a Sept. 17 theatrical release.

Tributes

wff president Serge Losique earlier announced producers Link and Dunning are this year’s recipients of the Special Grand Prix des Ameriques award for career contribution. The tribute is scheduled for Aug. 31.

The ceremony includes a screening of a new print of the saucy 30-year-old Denis Heroux’s box-office hit Valerie, the first Quebec film to top $1 million at the box office. Happily based in London, Eng., where he is a consultant for Alliance Atlantis Communications, Canadian coproduction pioneer Heroux is also slated to attend.

The legendary Dunning/Link duo was established back in 1962 with the launch of Cinepix, an integrated Montreal-based production and distribution company which later expanded to include CFP Distribution, today known as Lions Gate Films, a division of Lions Gate Entertainment, a publicly traded company based in Vancouver.

The duo’s filmography includes the earliest films of directors David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, George Kaczender and William Fruet, ranging from the smash box-office comedy Meatballs, which pulled in over $50 million in receipts in 1980, to Princes in Exile, a Monte Carlo Television Festival Gold winner coproduced with the nfb. wff has also scheduled a lifetime achievement award to late, great animation pioneer and movie mogul, Walt Disney (Sept. 4). Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, will accept the award.

Focus on Irish cinema

For the first time in the festival’s 23-year history, vp Daniele Cauchard says the vibrant Irish film industry will be the focus of the festival’s national cinema tribute.

Seventeen films are on the program, including 13 features, among them: Vinny Murphy’s Accelerator; Nichola Bruce’s I Could Read the Sky, adapted from the Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke novel; Syd Macartney’s A Love Divided, a likely tale of lovers divided by religion; Catha Black’s 19th century feminist romance, Love and Rage; Declan Recks’ highly anticipated tale of Dublin’s petty-crime class, Making Ends Meet; and two compelling and dark tales of Irish life and death, John Lynch’s Night Train and John Carney’s Park.

NFB highlights

nfb screening highlights at wff include Catherine Annau’s French Program doc French Kiss: la generation du reve Trudeau; Just a Wedding, the long-coming sequel to director Beverly Shaffer’s 1978 Oscar-winning doc I’ll Find a Way; and Tony Papa’s celebratory Opre Roma: Gypsies in Canada.

Also on the program: Carmen Garcia’s L’Effet Boeuf (Beef Inc.), an alarming picture of modern agribusiness; Grant Greschuks’ tribute doc Jeni Legon: Living in a Great Big Way; Jennifer Kawaja’s Under One Sky, an exploration of the lives of Arab women activists; and Marquise Lepage’s disturbing international survey of exploitation of young girls, Des Marelles et des petites filles (Hopscotch and Little Girls), coproduced by Montreal’s Productions Virage.

The French Program is also offering Femmes et religieuses… epouses de Dieu, director Lucie Lachapelle’s two-part epic doc exploration of nuns from the time of the founding of New France to today.

The delightful Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis animated short When the Day Breaks – top prize winner at both Annecy International and Cannes – is the subject of a special wff screening.

Market highlights

The Montreal International Film, TV and Video Market features a two-day symposium (Sept. 1-2) on international and national distribution, with Elie Samaha (Franchise Pictures), Cathy Malatesta (wb), Gilles Meunier (Canal Plus), Cindy Cowan (CC Entertainment Group), Duncan Marc (Columbia TriStar) and D. Jeffery Andrick among confirmed panelists.

Market director Gilles Beriault says wff is the new permanent commercial base in North America for MECLA-Marche du cinema d’Amerique latin, representing commercial film industry interests in Latin America.

Sixteen films will be screened in the Latin American Cinema section, a cherished wff tradition since 1977.

mecla is one of several national export groups confirmed for this year’s market, along with efp-European Film Promotion, and Italy’s anica.

Beriault says he expects strong professional contingents from China, the u.s., France and Japan. u.s. companies, including a slew of smaller indie operations attending, include M&L Banks, Film Finders, New Line Cinema, hbo, Old Town Pictures, Redwood Communications, Miramax Films, Shadow Distribution, Fox Albert Management, Cinevista, Paul Gardner Co., IFM Film Associates, Winstar TV+Video, Soho Entertainment, Salem Partners and Cinequest.

Awards & sponsors

The Air Canada Award is given to the most popular film in the festival and the $25,000 Telefilm Canada Award goes to the director of the most popular Canadian film.

Benson & Hedges Film is the sponsor of 11 free outdoor screenings and Kodak makes its debut as presenter of the annual Canadian Student Film Festival, which runs parallel with wff. The festival’s opening-night reception is sponsored by Astral Communications, while Brasserie McAuslan is the returning host of the popular St-Ambroise hospitality suite.

wff’s head office, press room and market are centrally located at the downtown Wyndham Hotel.