Montreal: Programmers at the World Film Festival have long prided themselves on the international flavor of their lineup – but at this year’s awards ceremony it was a Canadian film by a Montreal filmmaker that walked away the biggest winner.

Claude Gagnon’s Kamataki, a Canadian/Japanese coproduction about an uncle’s effort to rehabilitate his depressed nephew after a suicide attempt, won best direction, the Air Canada Prix Publique for most popular Canadian film, the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize when the fest handed out its honors on Sept. 5.

The Grand Prize of the Americas went to Pieter Kuijpers’ Off Screen, a Dutch/Belgian coproduction in which a paranoid man protesting the advent of widescreen television takes a number of hostages in Amsterdam. The film also picked up best actor honors for the performance of Jan Decleir.

There were other Canadian winners alongside Gagnon, including La Neuvieme, a Canadian/French/German coproduction. The film is Pierre-Henry Salfati’s feature-length analysis of the broad and enduring appeal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Montrealer David Boisclair won the Best Canadian Short Film Prize for Mesdames et Messieurs, a surreal film set in a 1930s nightclub populated entirely by children.

A fine crop of films. And yet, reactions were mixed to the bedevilled 29th edition of the fest, which has struggled to keep afloat in the choppy waters of the Montreal film scene since losing its $1 million of Telefilm Canada and SODEC funding last year. La Presse columnist Marc Cassivi called WFF’s lineup ‘a stunning litany of nobodies’ and a headline in the Montreal Gazette – usually a loyal defender of the festival – read ‘World Film Fest faces final curtain.’

The festival has also been criticized for its ill treatment of filmmakers and lack of support to their deal-making.

And yet, Zarqa Nawaz attracted a good deal of attention with her documentary Me and the Mosque, in which she examines attitudes towards women within Muslim houses of worship throughout North America. As well, buzz was generated about Shira Avni’s John and Michael, a stunning animated short about the bond between two men with Down syndrome. Some are calling it the Ryan of 2005. And Larry Kent sold out several houses with his comeback oddity The Hamster Cage, a black comedy which generated a great deal of media interest.

The Montreal-based filmmaker has good things to say about this year’s WFF. ‘We got incredible coverage and attention at this festival, and we got great crowds at the WFF,’ he says. ‘In larger festivals, like Cannes, Venice and Toronto, the independent producer is bound to get lost behind the big stars and directors. The World is a less celebrity-driven festival, but I really think that’s a good thing for independents.’

WFF founder and president Serge Losique also got the kind of photo opportunity he wanted – and desperately needed – when WFF kicked off on Aug. 26.

In town for the WFF’s opening film, the Chinese crime thriller A World Without Thieves, Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung arrived at the premiere with the festival boss by her side. The choice couldn’t have been more fitting. Cheung, star of everything from Hero to In the Mood For Love, has precisely the cachet combo – she’s both youthful and international – that the WFF direly needs. The fest rewarded her with its annual achievement award.

Once the party was over, there was a sense that the event had survived, but only barely. This time around, crowds looked smaller, and the tradition of applause at the end of premiere screenings seemed to have all but faded.

On the second day – Saturday of the opening weekend – a screening of Red Mercury, one of the most talked-about entries, was only approximately three-quarters full. The British film is bolstered by its prescience: it’s about several disaffected Muslim Britons who take a group of people hostage in a London restaurant with a dirty bomb. Made before this summer’s London bombings, the film’s script seems more than a bit visionary.

Another disappointment: the WFF has long prided itself on having almost all its films subtitled in both French and English, but, this year, about 65% did not have French subtitles and only seven of the 22 films in competition were in French or had French subtitles.

WFF brass blamed the feds. When Telefilm yanked its support, they said, with it went a $125,000 subsidy for subtitling.

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