Montreal: This year’s box-office performance of the four top-grossing Quebec-produced movies is unprecedented and simply stunning.

Taken together, the four releases – Charles Biname’s historical romance Seraphin, Denys Arcand’s double-Cannes winner Les Invasions barbares, Emile Gaudreault’s family comedy Mambo Italiano and Jean-Francois Pouliot’s summer comedy La Grande Seduction – have cumulative receipts of more than $24 million in the 10-month period since Seraphin’s release in theatres on Nov. 29, 2002.

‘It’s incredible to think how Quebec films have crushed all of the big major releases this summer without exception. It’s simply phenomenal,’ says Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm president Guy Gagnon.

Still on 69 screens across Quebec, La Grande Seduction, produced by Max Films and released by AAV, took in $170,495 over the Aug. 22-24 weekend, for a seven-week total take of $6,000,529.

Gagnon says Seduction has an excellent shot at displacing the Melenny Productions’ comedy Les Boys 1 ($6.1 million) as the second highest-grossing Quebec film of all time.

Mambo, distributed by Equinoxe Films and produced by Cinemaginaire, had taken in $2.94 million following the Aug. 22-24 weekend, and was still playing on 11 screens.

‘Mambo is still doing around $30,000 to $40,000 a week and will definitely hit the $3-million mark,’ says Equinoxe VP distribution Yves Dion.

Seraphin: Un Homme et son peche, produced by Cite-Amerique and also released by AAV, had a total take of $9,576,029, setting a new all-time record for a Quebec theatrical release.

Les Invasions barbares, distributed by AAV and produced by Cinemaginaire and French partner Pyramide, has total receipts of $5,649,700. Odeon Films is slated to release Invasions in the English market on Nov. 21.

Equinoxe will release Mambo, an original English-language production, on approximately 150 screens in English Canada Sept. 19, day-and-date with an opening 100-screen platform release in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco through Samuel Goldwyn Films, with a wider rollout in all major U.S. keys in the following weeks.

Depending on early returns and word of mouth, Dion says Mambo’s U.S. screen total could rise as high as 1,500.

All four of Quebec’s top-grossing films in ’03 are being showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival, along with Robert Lepage’s fifth feature, an adaptation of his own stage play, La Face cachee de la lune. It was shot in HD and produced by In Extremis Images and Media Principia and is distributed exclusively by AAV.

Also slated for TIFF is Michel Boujenah’s Pere et fils, a Max Films Euro coproduction filmed mostly on location in rural Charlevoix, QC last October, starring Philippe Noiret.

The Quebec industry recently adopted the practice of including taxes in box-office reporting, the standard everywhere else in North America.