While Canadian filmmakers may be in the grips of festival fever, more sober domestic distributors with films at TIFF are busily laying the groundwork for commercial release dates later this year and next.

‘[TIFF] is a great opportunity to bring out films to very literate audiences and to try to establish these films and get the press and audience to see them in the best possible context,’ says Hussain Amarshi, president of Toronto’s Mongrel Media.

Amarshi will have half a dozen films in Toronto, including Robert Altman’s The Company and Roger Michell’s The Mother, neither of which has a release date scheduled immediately after the fest.

Often a film’s release date is timed in part to screenings in late summer/early fall Canadian fests, whether in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver or the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax. But more crucially, Canadian release dates often coincide with those in the U.S.

The fortunes of Canadian distributors are greatly dictated by whether their programmed films come to a festival with either U.S. distribution in place or awards from earlier festivals such as Cannes or Venice. It is certainly advantageous for a film to have landed in the hands of a Canadian distributor through an existing output deal with a U.S. partner.

If so, then the Canadian distributor will look to piggyback on the U.S. release date and the accompanying advertising campaign south of the border to drive their own domestic marketing and publicity campaigns.

If this is not the case, the Canadian distributor may wait to see whether the film lands U.S. distribution at Toronto or another fest, which gives some indication of a viable release date and potential box office.

A case in point: Odeon Films is bringing The Barbarian Invasions (aka Les Invasions barbares) to open TIFF after awards at Cannes – best screenplay for Denys Arcand and best actress for Marie-Josee Croze – transformed the film’s chances to succeed at the North American box office. And a U.S. platform release date beginning on Nov. 21 indicates that American distributor Miramax has Oscar hopes for The Barbarian Invasions, at least in the foreign-language film category.

That said, the Nov. 21 release date presents a challenge for Odeon, the film’s English Canadian distributor (Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm already opened the film on 136 screens in Quebec). On the plus side, snagging the prestigious opening night gala slot in Toronto will guarantee Arcand and his film red-carpet treatment and wide Canadian and international press coverage.

But Odeon president Bryan Gliserman insists the Toronto spotlight would be far more useful if Invasions had a release date coming out of the festival. It doesn’t. ‘Unless the film is literally opening in a week or a month [after the fest], we don’t want the message to go out at that time,’ Gliserman explains.

So Odeon will strike a bargain with media attending the festival stipulating that, in return for access to Arcand and the film’s cast, they hold publication of features and major reviews of the film until ahead of its November release.

Odeon will have around two dozen films in Toronto, many of which, including Sylvain Chomet’s animated feature Belleville Rendez-Vous, Gus Van Sant’s Columbine-inspired Elephant and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams, have mid-to-late-November release dates.

The aim here is to qualify these films for possible Oscar nominations, another barometer of how well a foreign-language film might perform at the box office. If a foreign-language film garners an Oscar nomination and – the film gods willing – an Academy Award, the U.S. distributor is likely to move up the release date for a film, and the Canadian distributor will likely follow suit.

TIFF has various film programs and screening slots, and these have varying values to a distributor. One of the prize spots for a Canuck film, following the opening night gala, is opening the Perspective Canada sidebar. Last year, that slot was held by Deepa Mehta’s Bollywood/Hollywood, which went on to record domestic box office of more than $1.2 million. And how much did the placement at TIFF mean to the film’s overall success?

The one followed the other, recalls Mongrel’s Amarshi, who is the film’s distributor.

‘Bollywood/Hollywood went into the festival last year with unknown box-office potential,’ he says.

But a successful festival screening and the buzz that followed determined the scope of the release. ‘Initially, we had far fewer prints in mind. We changed plans and went bigger and wider on national release when we opened the film six weeks after Toronto [on two dozen screens],’ he adds.

The reward this year for Mehta is that her latest film, the romantic The Republic of Love, will get the Hollywood treatment with a world premiere at Roy Thomson Hall as a gala screening.

‘This is a big movie that we believe has a real shot in the marketplace,’ says Andrew Austin, senior VP and GM of Seville Pictures, the movie’s distributor.

Austin, who will have about 10 films at TIFF, is eyeing an early 2004 release for The Republic of Love, possibly on Valentine’s Day, so the groundwork for later promotion and marketing will be laid in Toronto.

That means a big party following the screening and junket-style media interviews with Mehta and cast members including Bruce Greenwood (Ararat) and British import Emilia Fox (The Pianist).

This year’s Perspective Canada sidebar will open with Calgary director Gary (waydowntown) Burns’ A Problem with Fear, which puts a smile on the face of Christian Larouche, president of Christal Films, which distributes.

‘If we were not opening Perspective Canada, my strategy would be different,’ he says. Christal would likely have bypassed the festival circuit to avoid A Problem with Fear getting lost in the clutter and attempted to build buzz for a commercial release in early 2004.

But now Larouche has every advantage that Toronto might afford Burns’ fourth TIFF entry.

‘Gary has a following with the festival, the press likes him and this is the best place to start the word of mouth and to launch the film for release at the end of September,’ he says.

Larouche has commercial hopes for two other films he has in Toronto this year – Jacob Tierney’s debut Twist and Bernard (La Femme qui boit) Emond’s 20H 17, Rue Darling.

Twist is due for an early 2004 release, and Christal will weigh Toronto festival audience reaction to decide whether Emond’s film has potential life in English Canada.

TIFF 2002 provided a similarly successful launch pad for at least one breakout Canadian movie – Wiebke von Carolsfeld’s Marion Bridge, which picked up the fest’s best first Canadian feature award.

A Sunday morning TIFF screening for the film ended with a standing ovation and gave heart to Mongrel’s Amarshi, the film’s distributor.

‘At that point, we had some confidence that this film had some playability,’ he recalls.

-www.mongrelmedia.com

-www.allianceatlantis.com

-www.sevillepictures.com

-www.christalfilms.com