There is far too much ‘chance and zeitgeist,’ in Hussain Amarshi’s words, to predict with any real accuracy the chance of success for any given film. Everyone rolls the dice. But if he and his company, distributor Mongrel Media, have proven anything in the last eight years, it is that those dice can, with smart choices and precise marketing, be loaded.

Going into this year’s TIFF, the Toronto-based boutique has a very respectable four films in the Perspective Canada program. Bollywood/Hollywood, the highly anticipated comedy by local filmmaker Deepa Mehta, shares the Mongrel slate with Wiebke von Carolsfeld’s Marion Bridge and two much-gabbed-about digital features, The Wild Dogs and Past Perfect. Mongrel will bring these and roughly 30 other movies to theatres in the next 12 months.

‘We’re hoping that Bollywood will be our breakthrough film,’ says Amarshi, president of Mongrel. ‘It’s a fantastic film and all of our work is directed at making it a success at the box office.’

More than half a million dollars will go into three poster campaigns, plus bus shelter, TV and billboard ads. A trailer will roll in theatres on Sept. 6 hyping the film’s Oct. 25 release on two dozen screens in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and other key markets.

Mongrel snagged the comedy almost two years ago, signing on, for the first time, early in development. Hussain says if the company wants to stay ahead of its competitors and graduate to more prominent movies, it has to get involved as soon as possible. ‘Until now we’ve been buying films that were either rough cuts or finished,’ he says. ‘[Now] we have to get involved at the script stage. Otherwise we don’t get access.’

To that end, Mongrel recently pledged to take on three to five Canadian movies per year, up from a previous one or two. It’s a ‘comfortable percentage,’ he says, of what the company can afford.

The four-person outfit has earned its props as a purveyor of art and indie films – showcasing Canadian film while also importing foreign hits such as Shohei Imamura’s The Eel and Palme d’Or winner A Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami. The company also scooped its competitors earlier this year when it signed a 10-picture output deal with Sony Pictures Classics, the art-house spin-off of the Hollywood giant. That agreement handed Mongrel all Canadian rights for seven films, including the British drama Last Orders with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins, the Oscar-nominated Argentinian film Son of the Bride, and the romantic comedy Crush, with Andie MacDowell. Mongrel got the Canada-except-Quebec rights for the remaining three.

Hussain plans to deal with SPC again, but can’t get into details. He is also taking a keener interest in digital films such as Daniel MacIvor’s Past Perfect and Thom Fitzgerald’s The Wild Dogs, both part of Halifax-based imX communications’ seats 3a and 3c digital series.

‘We’ve seen a number of digital features that have been a success at the box office,’ he says, pointing to the Dogme films. ‘Celebration was shot on DV and that was a few years ago when the technology was less developed. I don’t think the format itself makes a difference. It’s a question of how it plays out.’

But all the marketing in the world can’t compete with the power of buzz, the real goal of a boutique distributor, says Hussain. ‘If you have a great film that’s working on word of mouth, there’s no stopping it,’ he enthuses. ‘If not…there’s not much you can do. We’ve had successes and failures like anyone else, but the successes have been phenomenal.’ A case in point is Afterlife. Mongrel released the Japanese film on just one Toronto screen in 1999 and it played for an astonishing six months, thanks largely to warm reviews and talkative cineastes. It eventually widened to three other cities and brought in $350,000.

Hussain is cautiously optimistic that Canadian films can, eventually, achieve the 5% domestic box-office goal set out by the new-fangled Canada Feature Film Fund. ‘It’s possible. But I think it will depend on year to year – in other countries the percentages are back and forth. With one or two successes that number can be met.’

In the meantime, he wants to apply what the company has learned about foreign films – that they need precise niche marketing – to those from Canada. ‘We want to be in this business for a long time and we’re into working with Canadian talent,’ he says. ‘We have learned, by handling foreign films, that there is a need for that kind of nurturing. We can put that into the Canadian films we’re handling.’

But despite his company’s newfound interest in scripts and treatments, he does not want to stray too far from his main business. He’ll sit down with a director and share his thoughts on a developing project, but there’s a line he says he does not want to cross. ‘We’re not producers. We’re distributors and I believe in a clear distinction…what we know is how to bring a film to an audience. That’s our job. Producing is a different calling.’

Amarshi is equally wary of leaving the Mongrel market and taking on bigger films. The company is not a Miramax or an Alliance Atlantis, he says, and he’s not sure he’d know what to do with an indie giant such as Austin Powers.

‘We’re a small, specialized company,’ he says. ‘And we’re very proud of that.’

-www.mongrelmedia.com