Best Motion Picture Nominees

Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

With seven Genie nominations, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) is hoping to add some new hardware to its trophy case.

Produced by Nunavut-based Igloolik Isuma Productions and the National Film Board, the film has already been bestowed with the Camera d’Or for best first feature at the Cannes International Film Festival and the Toronto-City Award for best Canadian feature at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival. To cap off a great year, Atanarjuat has also taken home prizes at festivals in Edinburgh and Flanders, and was named Canada’s official selection for consideration in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language category.

Coproducer Norman Cohn, a founding shareholder of Isuma, says the attention the film is receiving is gratifying to him and fellow producers Zacharias Kunuk, who directed, and the NFB’s Germaine Wong. The late Paul Apak Angilirq, who wrote the script, also produced, with the NFB’s Sally Bochner executive producing.

‘Our business is about using a film medium to unhinge deep historical stereotypes about Inuit and native culture and also [show] what Inuit or native people are capable of doing right now,’ says Cohn, also the film’s cinematographer. ‘We knew we were making what would turn out to be, if we could finish it, an extraordinary film [in which] people would see something they had never seen before.’

Atanarjuat is the first feature produced, directed, written and acted by Inuit. The story follows the title character, who ends up in a conflict with Oki, the son of his camp leader, over the affections of the lovely Atuat. The script, penned in the Inuktitut language (another first), represents a deviation from the reliance on improvisation that marked previous short films.

Cohn adds that funding the $1.96-million film was no easy task under the existing financial guidelines, largely because it was such a novel concept.

‘We bet that the audience, whether it was a jury or [regular moviegoers], would be capable of seeing it for what it really is, which is something completely new, but at the same time something that works as a film,’ Cohn says. Dustin Dinoff

Un crabe dans la tete

Three weeks after its Nov. 2 Montreal debut, the dramedy Un crabe dans la tete had generated $235,000 – perhaps not the bonanza of Les Boys, but substantial evidence that the producers have pleased Quebec audiences.

Joseph Hillel and Luc Dery of Montreal’s Production Qu4tre par Quatre made Crabe, the story of a compulsive pleaser, for $1.7 million in the fall and winter of 2000/01. The film, written, directed and lensed by Andre Turpin (DOP on Denis Villeneuve’s films) will appear in the World Cinema program at the Sundance Film Festival next month. Film Tonic distributes.

‘People recognize themselves in Alex, the lead character,’ says Dery. ‘Initially, he is bizarre, but in the end the character is likable. We’re dealing with a real and serious subject in a light way.’

In the story, Alex (played by David La Haye, who figures in every scene) is an underwater photographer who returns to Montreal to become entangled in personal relationships made more complicated by his need to say ‘yes’ to everyone.

The biggest challenge, says Dery, was shooting the film without being fully financed. Because of the seasonal requirements of the script, the producers had to get to camera quickly last fall or face a whole year before production could begin. The shoot’s three weeks on, three weeks off scheduling, meanwhile, allowed the producers to edit as they went and thus provide results to convince investors including Telefilm Canada to ante up the money to complete the project.

The unusual schedule also meant cast and crew knew how the film was evolving – a perspective that meant later shots had greater impact on the final edit, says Dery.

Qu4tre par Quatre, which produced director Philippe Falardeau’s Jutra-winning La moitie gauche du frigo (The Left Side of the Fridge), is currently finishing the short film Snooze by director Stephane Lafleur and developing the drama Objects in the Mirror Are Closer than They Appear with director Patrick Demers. According to Dery, the latter may go to camera in late 2002 or early 2003. Ian Edwards

Eisenstein

A London-based writer/director; Canadian and German cofinancing; locations in Mexico, the Ukraine and Russia; an international cast and crew; and a scheduled premiere mere months away. On paper, making a film within these parameters brings a better-than-average chance of turning into a logistical nightmare.

Fortunately for the makers of Eisenstein, a profile of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, nominated for best picture, direction and screenplay for Renny Bartlett, editing and score, all the disparate elements came together like a montage by the master himself.

‘The production centres were in Montreal and Berlin, but we were shooting in Kiev, Odessa, St. Petersburg and Mexico, and not in Canada or Germany. It was fairly complicated to put together,’ says producer Martin Paul-Hus of Montreal-based Amerique Film, which provided 40% of the $6-million film’s financing. It was coproduced by Regine Schmid of Berlin-based Vif Filmproduktion, which ponied up the remaining 60%.

A commitment to premier the film at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival further contributed to a tight schedule.

‘We had to hit every target,’ Paul-Hus says. ‘People told us we were mad to be doing this, given that we had to shoot in countries that were reputably uncontrollable. Yet it all worked out very efficiently.’

In fact, the foreign locations ultimately proved to be a benefit, offsetting any logistical juggling and upping the production value. ‘We were able to stretch the budget beyond belief by doing it in the Ukraine and Russia,’ says Bartlett.

Typical of international productions, Eisenstein’s financing came together after a series of false starts. When he first saw the screenplay in 1996 – at the time, U.K.-based Adventure Pictures was producing – Paul-Hus took a pass. But a year later, after seeing script revisions, he agreed to produce.

Paul-Hus says he was attracted to the project because it was not a traditional biopic of Eisenstein, whose techniques of shot juxtaposition revolutionized film language. Rather, in presenting a personal account of the director including his tensions with Stalin, it is a story that resonates today.

Paul-Hus got Schmid on board following the 1999 International Film Financing Conference in San Francisco, where she selected the project in the Buyers Best Picks forum.

Eisenstein is distributed by Film Tonic in Canada and Fortissimo Films worldwide. It has been exhibited in Canada and Japan and will play in January at New York’s Film Forum. Peter Vamos

Treed Murray

The first time best picture nominee Treed Murray was pitched to producer Helen du Toit, she declined.

‘I was working on another project at the time and I was pretty skeptical about the idea,’ says du Toit. ‘I started reading the script anyway, and it was a real page-turner. I’ve read a lot of scripts but this one kept me interested.’

Between 1994 and 1998, du Toit produced eight independent short films, including the Genie-nominated ShhhÉ. She was also a programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival Perspective Canada program from 1997 to 1999.

After reading the Treed Murray screenplay by writer/director William Phillips, she signed on as producer for the single-location psychological thriller about an advertising executive trapped up a tree overnight by a gang of thugs.

It was not long before du Toit had the commitment of Citytv, The Movie Network, Super Ecran and Corus Premium Television. Still, raising the film’s $2-million budget presented a formidable challenge.

‘Just before production started in August of last year, we weren’t sure the project was going to happen,’ says du Toit. ‘We were scrambling to get money from various sources. We had already committed about $200,000. We ended up going into [production] more than 20% under budget.’

At the last minute, however, the remaining money came through from the Canadian Television Fund, Telefilm Canada and The Harold Greenberg Fund.

Treed Murray had its world premiere as part of Perspective Canada at this year’s TIFF and has since been released in Vancouver and Toronto by Odeon Films. Phillips is nominated for a Genie for direction and the film is also up for awards in the categories of music, overall sound and sound editing.

Du Toit is currently working on two features: Not in My Backyard, to be directed by Roz Owen, is in the development stage; and Peter Lynch’s The Floating World has just secured financing from Telefilm and should go into production in the spring or summer of 2002. Kimberly MacDonald

The War Bride

Producers of The War Bride hope that in a time of violence, audiences will be in the mood for love.

‘This is a story about faith, hope and love,’ says Jordan Randell, a VP of development at DB Entertainment in Calgary and an executive producer. (The film was coproduced by DB president Douglas Berquist.) ‘It’s what is needed in Canada and also in the U.S. This is a film that shows what the human spirit is capable of.’

Not that this US$5.1-million U.K./Canada copro (with Alistair MacLean-Clark of U.K.-based Harvest Pictures) is a typical love story.

Inspired by screenwriter Angela Workman’s family history, the film is set at a time when young prairie men were in Europe during World War II. The War Bride tells the story of an English woman who immigrates to Canada to live on her new husband’s ranch. But the glamorous spread he promised during their courtship turns out to be a struggling dirt-patch of a farm inhabited by her cold and uninviting in-laws. When her husband returns, broken by battle, and she has an unexpected opportunity to return home to London, she chooses love.

Starring British actors Anna Friel and Brenda Fricker, Canadians Molly Parker and Aden Young and American Loren Dean, the film was shot in Edmonton during the unseasonably bitter cold of May and June 2000, and later on in London.

The War Bride won the US$50,000 top prize at The Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis in October.

Randell says the U.K. investors provided 100% of the cash flow for production, while tax credits and Alberta film grants contribute to DB’s 50% stake in the production.

The A-Channel Drama Fund and The Harold Greenberg Fund helped the film through its five years of development, with The Movie Network also on board. And while no major distributor has yet signed, the feature had exclusive screenings this month in Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, and will make its way to other Canadian screens through the Toronto International Film Festival’s Film Circuit.

Berquist has also produced The Claim, starring Wes Bentley and Sarah Polley, with other U.K. partners. According to Randell, the Alberta copro company is currently involved in a U.K./Spain production set in the 1960s and scheduled for shooting in Spain next spring. Ian Edwards