Business was brisk at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, as roughly 700 sales delegates, representing 409 companies from 35 different countries, descended on the city’s hotels, screening rooms and bars for the annual 10-day marathon of screenings, schmoozing and sales talks.

At press time, local giant Alliance Atlantis had taken the early lead, announcing three freshly sealed deals. The company scooped all international rights excluding the U.S. for Roger Dodger, the Tribeca and Venice crowd-pleaser and debut feature by Dylan Kidd. AAC’s Odeon Films will distribute in Canada; its Momentum Pictures arm will handle the U.K.

AAC also scored worldwide rights – minus Latin America, Italy and the English-speaking world – to the much-buzzed-about Personal Velocity by writer/director Rebecca Miller, which will hit screens in November. The heartfelt drama was a big draw at this year’s fest. Even the producers had a hard time getting into the screening and reportedly had to sit in the aisles.

AAC was also appointed international sales agent for director Benoit Jacquot’s period piece Adolphe, adding it to a roster that includes such other hot properties as Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, Manon Briand’s La Turbulence des Fluides and Keith Behrman’s Flower & Garnet.

According to festival organizer Kelley Alexander, of the international buyers and sellers, Japan was one of the most heavily represented territories at this year’s fest. Forty-six delegates from 28 companies arrived from across the Pacific, continuing a trend that has seen increasing competition among Japanese reps. ‘We’ve seen an increase over the past three years,’ says Alexander. ‘More acquisitions get made for Japan every year.’

And the competition, for all players, lasts a lot longer than it used to. ‘This is no longer an opening weekend festival,’ she adds. ‘Most buyers stay here until Saturday. We’ve got a number of world premieres happening on Friday, so people have to stay in town if they’re going to see a movie and actually acquire it.’

Among the Canadian debuts was Ararat. The latest from Atom Egoyan made its first North American appearance and opened the festival to lukewarm reviews. The film, which stars Arsinee Khanjian and Bruce Greenwood, addresses the massacre of one million Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915. Festival goers could be heard cautiously murmuring criticism over their vodka martinis at the many weekend parties.

Several have speculated that David Cronenberg’s newest creep show, the Canadian/U.K. coproduction Spider, which lost out to Ararat as the festival opener but screened as a coveted gala, could be this year’s come-from-behind favorite. The musical comedy Bollywood/Hollywood by Toronto filmmaker Deepa Mehta, which opened the Perspective Canada program on Sept. 6, also had the industry abuzz. The film, which stars Rahul Khanna and Jessica Pare, even had them clapping at the industry screening.

Mehta and her producer David Hamilton were also among the local and international filmmakers on hand at the Rogers Industry Centre panel discussions – where weekend talks dwelled on the ins and outs of funding and distribution deals.

Their advice? If you want to make a movie, make it fast. Don’t wait for funding or tinker endlessly with the script. ‘I don’t have the passion or the energy to work on a script for six years,’ said Mehta, who penned Bollywood/Hollywood in four months, writing it out longhand in a spiral notebook. ‘The film I’m directing next month has been in development for seven years,’ she exclaimed. ‘That makes no sense. What took so long?’

Hamilton added that Canadians should put more money and effort into promotion, a sentiment echoed later that same day by Telefilm Canada executive director Richard Stursberg, who talked shop for an hour with THINKFilm president Jeff Sackman.

Stursberg repeated the Telefilm line that for Canadian films to earn at least 5% of the domestic box office, distributors should foot the bill for more vigorous promotion. Canadians should also make ‘more commercial, broader range’ movies, he said, citing the French-language market and its 9% domestic box office as an example.

‘French film is not limited to auteur pictures,’ he told the crowd. ‘We make big comedies, kids pictures, romantic comedies, thrillers. They’re not just auteur pictures and they find a place.’

But Sackman dismissed the 5% goal as vague and arbitrary. ‘I don’t think anyone thinks this 5% can be held up as an example. Who is that a success for?’ he asked. ‘People look at Men with Brooms as a great success. It grossed [$4.1 million], but no one knows how much Alliance Atlantis spent on it.’

Sackman also took a dim view of Telefilm’s performance envelope system, saying it puts too much money into too few hands. A number of filmmakers in the audience were also displeased. Stursberg said Telefilm, which currently sets half of the Canada Feature Film Fund aside for top-box earning producers and distributors, is ‘thinking very hard’ about the controversial system and ‘where the split should be.’ He said Telefilm will meet with distributors this month for further talks.

At least Alan McCullough got his funding. The 29-year-old Toronto filmmaker beat out stiff competition on Sept. 9 to win the $10,000 Telefilm Canada Pitch This! prize for his movie Zamboni Guy. The annual contest selects six finalists who pitch their movies to an audience of festival delegates. McCollough describes his project as ‘a heart-warming family film about a shy Prairie guy and his quest to prove himself by driving a Zamboni across Canada.’

Money was also in the air at the Canadian Film Centre barbecue on Sept. 8, at which director and CFC honcho Norman Jewison announced that The Movie Network had cut a cheque for $325,000 and signed on as an investor in the CFC’s Feature Film Project.

‘The Movie Network is a perfect partner for us,’ Jewison told an overheated and increasingly sunburned crowd. ‘Because that’s what we’re all about – making movies.’ The FFP provides funding and mentorship to rookie filmmakers and since 1992 has backed projects such as Cube, Rude and Khaled.

Jewison’s brief remarks were upstaged, however, by Martin Short, who arrived at the CFC fete, with his own film crew, in his Jiminy Glick persona. A movie about the heavyweight star-humper and talk show host is in the works and has been shooting scenes around town at assorted festival events. Short led a parade of reporters and crew back and forth across the CFC’s lawn, mugging for the cameras, fawning at fans and, at one point, screaming into a cell phone.

-www.e.bell.ca/filmfest