The film with the distinction of the highest number of Leo nominations, My Father’s Angel, tells one part of Canada’s immigration story.

Nominated in almost every picture category, the film is a drama about a Muslim family from war-torn Bosnia that has fled to Canada ‘and find that their only true friends are a Serbian family; it’s about them trying to find peace in a new country,’ says filmmaker Davor Marjanovic.

The film, shot with a completely Canadian cast, reflects the history of the filmmaker, although it is a long way from being autobiographical.

‘I’m Bosnian, I came here in ’93. I had the idea for a long time and started working with a writer two or three years ago. I started on the script in 1995, it took us two or three years to make it good enough to be shown around. We shot everything in April of 1998 and did final editing in 1999.’

‘I didn’t come here as a refugee but I have friends who did – they have mixed emotions, mixed histories, mixed everything. Some of them succeeded and some didn’t, just like everywhere.’

Making the film – which was funded through the nsi’s First Feature Program – was not the easiest of tasks: ‘It was very hard simply because I’m in a field where it’s difficult for a Canadian to make a film and as I’m coming from far away to do a film, that makes it really hard.’

Marjanovic already has his teeth into another project. ‘I’m working on a script, a comedy – Three Romeos, Two Juliets and Miss Sherlock Holmes. It’s about three generations of the same family and their problems and how they are dealing with them. [It’s also] about three generations of that pop culture that we are enjoying – a rebel without a cause, a hippie and a generation X daughter.’