Leo-nominated Noroc has the distinction of being the first feature film in North America to be shot in the JVC D9 format, a new professional format that allows for tremendous economies.

‘When you shoot on 35mm, to buy and process the film and rent the camera you’re looking at $250,000 and that’s just for shooting,’ says filmmaker Marc Retailleau.

‘When you shoot on digital it’s $75 a cassette and you get an hour and forty minutes.’ This economy – and a hardware-borrowing deal struck with b.c.’s jvc representative, Commercial Electronics – enabled Retailleau to make Noroc for $24,000 borrowed from friends in France.

Noroc tells the story of Petru, ‘a Romanian immigrant and his struggle to become a Canadian citizen. He’s trying to get his immigration papers and that’s the storyline.’

The filmmaker, a native of France, has his own immigrant story. ‘I came to Canada in 1991 – I wanted to change my life.’

Retailleau decided on Canada when, while staying with friends in Paris he happened to read a travel magazine that included an article on Canada, specifically Montreal, ‘and I had a flash and packed my stuff and went. It was as simple as that. I was dreaming about Canada for a long time. In Europe, we dream about Canada, because you have lots of space.’ Retailleau went to Vancouver after three years in Montreal and started working on his script shortly thereafter, partly as a means of improving his English-language skills. The script, which ended up being a collaborative effort with Robert French, who is also Leo-nominated, arrived at a Romanian protagonist in a roundabout way.

‘I was looking for a country somewhere in the east of Europe. When I did research, I discovered Romania was the only country that had both a Slav and a Latin culture at the same time. Romania is [surrounded by Slav people] but they speak Italian and they are very Latin in the way they speak. I speak French, which is a Latin language and I like Slavs – during my research, I met many Romanians through the [immigrant] community.’

In fact, the title of the film comes from one of these research sessions.

‘One night I was drinking with them and [someone] said ‘Noroc!’ and I asked what it meant and he said it meant ‘Good health!’ and I said ‘That is the title of the movie!”