Instability in the German film distribution business and economic uncertainty in Italy, Japan and the rest of Asia will impact greatly on Canadian distributors buying and selling films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Mark Horowitz, handling international sales for Alliance Atlantis Pictures International out of Los Angeles, says distributors have to think hard about current, and sometimes alarming, changes in the global economy.

‘The downturn in America is negligible compared to other countries such as Germany,’ Horowitz says. ‘And we have to consider what’s happening in Italy, Japan and the Asian markets.’

Despite reduced fortunes overseas, Toronto has become a miss-at-your-peril festival for Americans, and most will attend: ‘U.S. buyers have made Toronto part of their pattern for buying independent films. It’s a little more worldly than Sundance, and offers some quality films.’ Horowitz says.

He points to Memento and Sexy Beast as recent examples of quality showing through at TIFF.

TIFF’s buyer data underlines the growing number of Americans attending Toronto. Among the hundreds of buyers due this year, 46 represent companies new to the festival, including several known to buy Canadian product.

As well, Horowitz insists distributors have to keep on top of ever-shifting audience demand.

‘If tastes are changing at all, they’re maturing, audiences are less susceptible to hype. People are more demanding,’ he says.

Alliance Atlantis has three titles screening in Toronto, two of which are Canadian. The much-discussed, $12-million Picture Claire, earlier known as Picturing Claire and Claire’s Hat, is the latest work from Bruce McDonald, which stars Gina Gershon and Juliette Lewis and will screen in the Special Presentation program.

Odeon Films, an AAC company, also has worldwide rights to Treed Murray, a low-budget independent feature from director Bill Phillips. The sublimely titled Perspective Canada film, receiving its world premiere in Toronto, was produced by former Perspective Canada programmer Helen du Toit.

The third film to be handled by Alliance Atlantis is World Traveler, starring Billy Crudup and Julianne Moore and the follow-up feature from Burt Freundlich after The Myth of Fingerprints.

World Traveler is produced by the Independent Film Channel in the U.S., which, along with its distribution arm, has a relationship with AAC.

Horowitz picked up worldwide rights, excluding the U.S., to World Traveler at last year’s TIFF and began selling the film at the AFM. It will have its world launch in Deauville, France, just before Toronto.

Horowitz says presales are going well. All-media deals have already been inked for the U.K., Greece, Turkey, Israel and Portugal.

Dan Lyon, exec vice-president of distribution for TVA International, is hoping its Canadian TIFF entry this year, Century Hotel, will get the same boost from its marketing campaign that Ginger Snaps got in 2000.

Bowing in the Perspective Canada sidebar, Century Hotel should benefit from name recognition. The feature stars Lindy Booth, Colm Feore, Mia Kirshner and married singers/musicians Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk.

TVA has worldwide rights in all media, and Lyon will license Century Hotel along with Heather Wyer. David Garber is helping snag a U.S. deal.

TVA will also bring David Lynch to Toronto to tout his latest movie, Mulholland Drive, to screen in the Masters program.

‘It begins like a traditional film noir, then becomes very Lynchian,’ Lyon says.

A thriller/mystery/soap opera that looks inwardly at Los Angeles and the movie business, Mulholland Drive ‘has a high concentration of beautiful women and weird events,’ Lyon says.

TVA retains the Canadian rights to the movie, while Universal Focus holds the U.S. rights.

In all, TVA is bringing six films to TIFF. Other foreign titles on offer include Devil’s Backbone from Guillermo Del Torro (Cosmos, Mimic), which Lyon predicts will be a sleeper out of the Special Presentations program. A gothic horror story, Devil’s Backbone offers ghosts, violence and suspense set against the background of the Spanish Civil War.

The movie fared ‘fantastically’ well during its Spanish premiere, Lyon recalls. The cast includes Marisa Paredes of Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother and Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful.

TVA’s glamour quotient at the fest includes Jeanne Moreau attending the world premiere gala for the French film Cet Amour La, in part an autobiographical account of a love tryst between French novelist Marguerite Duras and a youthful lover.

TVA has the Canadian rights, and is planning a February release.

Lyon and colleagues are screening another French production, Brotherhood of the Wolf, in the Midnight Madness program. The English version is set for a November release after a successful Quebec run.

TVA’s final title is Profession of Arms from director Ermanno Olmi, who won a Palme d’Or at Cannes with The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Arms, part of the Masters program, is a 16th century story of war in Europe. TVA again has the Canadian rights, with a release date yet to be determined.

Helping Lyon spot potential acquisitions will be Jim Murphy, Rob Cousins and Howard Rabkin.

Joanne Senecal, a partner at Montreal-based distributor Film Tonic, has a half-dozen films to drive down the 401. The first is the Perspective Canada opener, Un Crabe dans la Tete from director/DOP Andre Turpin (Zigrail). Tonic has the world rights to the Quebec film, and will send it to the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media (FCMM) in October before a possible November release.

Catherine Martin’s Mariages is Senecal’s other PC entrant, also selected for official competition at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Mariages is set for a September release in Quebec, before then being considered for Toronto and Vancouver, depending on box office.

Also from Tonic is the France/ Canada coproduction Le Pornographe, director Bertrand Bonello’s tale about a 1970s porn filmmaker who risks the wrath of his son to make one last skin flick to pay his debts.

Holding rights in Canada, Senecal expects Le Pornographe to get a November or December release in Quebec after bowing in Toronto.

Other Tonic titles include Joseph Gai Ramaka’s Karmen, in Planet Africa, Joseph Fares’ Jalla! Jalla!, in the festival’s Scandinavian series, and Italian for Beginners, for which Tonic holds only Quebec rights.

Bryan Gliserman, president of Odeon Films, will have 10 films in Toronto. Two are jointly repped: L’Ange de Goudron, for which Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm holds worldwide rights, and Treed Murray.

Gliserman is seeking a delayed reaction to some of his films unspooling in Toronto. That means securing exposure for the film at the festival, but doing more to generate word of mouth when the film gets its general release.

‘Sometimes we’re part of a larger initiative where we want the film to be seen by distributors [from] elsewhere, and sales agents and buyers for other territories,’ Gliserman explains. ‘Then we can give access to the director and key cast,’ he adds.

Gliserman says Odeon is also working with Independent Film Channel Distribution and Bob Berney on Business of Strangers, starring Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles, now slated for a December theatrical release in Canada.

Meantime, IFC Productions-produced Monsoon Wedding, which Odeon is distributing with USA Films and which will see director Mira Nair (1988 Oscar nominee Salaam Bombay!) attend TIFF for the North American premiere. Gliserman has high hopes for Monsoon, ‘almost a Bollywood film, a romantic comedy set in Delhi about arranged marriages.’

Another Odeon title getting gala treatment in Toronto is Novocaine, starring Steve Martin, TIFF favorite Helena Bonham Carter and Elias Koteas. Odeon is distributing the film in Canada, while Artisan Entertainment, which produced it, retains the world rights.

Other new titles for Odeon include three from IFC: Spanish Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mother, Too), Big Bad Love, starring Debra Winger and directed by husband Arliss Howard, and Manic, a U.S. indie directed by Jordan Melamed and starring Don Cheadle and Zooey Deschanel.

Montreal-based Remstar Corp. is bringing to TIFF Anne Wheeler’s Suddenly Naked, a drama about love and betrayal that stars Wendy Crewson, Peter Coyote and Joe Cobden, ahead of a limited mid-October theatrical release.

Also on tap from Remstar is Michael Haneke’s La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), a 2001 Cannes Film Festival winner to be screened in an English subtitled version, and Ferzan Ozpetek’s Le Fate Ignoranti/Ignorant Fairies, an Italian/France coproduction.

Remstar copresident Julien Remillard says the distrib had nine films at TIFF last year, and fewer this time round. ‘This year we have only those films we think will have a commercial life [run] in English Canada.’

Remillard and other Remstar executives, including copresident Maxime Remillard, general manager Tony Porrello and Quebec distribution director Armand Lafond have scheduled meetings at TIFF as the distributor expands beyond simple distribution in Canada to include the acquisition of selective foreign rights.

‘We’re the only West Coast distributor,’ says Tim Brown, mint-fresh VP of distribution at Vancouver’s Keystone Releasing, a division of Keystone Entertainment, which bought out Red Sky last year.

Brown, a veteran with TVA International in Toronto, only landed at Keystone May 1 and has no films in this year’s festival. He will be on the lookout for ‘commercial’ acquisitions, bypassing art-house fare.

Andrew Austin, senior VP and GM at Seville Pictures, is also bringing a hefty bag with films to TIFF, including nine foreign titles. These include North American premieres for Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar and I’m Going Home from Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveria.

With files from Leo Rice-Barker