Christal Films’ Familia had a big weekend Sept. 16-18. Not only did director Louise Archambault receive the prize for best first Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film also had a good opening weekend at the Quebec box office, bringing in $160,972 on 46 screens ­- one featuring English subtitles – for a per-screen average of about $3,500.

Familia’s producer Luc Déry, of Montreal’s micro_scope, dropped in on a couple of Montreal theaters to see how the film, a drama about the tumultuous nature of mother-daughter relationships, was doing over the first weekend.

‘It went very well,’ says Déry. He’s not certain if the award will lead to a larger demand in Quebec and more screens, however.

‘We were actually looking at 30 to 35 initially,’ he says. ‘It can probably hit a couple more, but I don’t think it’s going to go over 50 screens. I think it’s very accessible, a film for a wide audience, but we’re not expecting it to explode like [recent Quebec B.O. hits] C.R.A.Z.Y. or Aurore.’

TVA Films’ C.R.A.Z.Y. was already an unqualified hit in Quebec before it won the TIFF award for best Canadian feature and was selected as Canada’s foreign-language submission for the Oscars. At the end of the Sept. 16 weekend, Jean-Marc Vallée’s drama about an odd-duck boy growing up in the 1970s, had drawn almost $5.5 million, still playing on 40 screens after 17 weeks, never once having dropped out of the province’s top-10 list. TVA will likely release the film in English Canada in October, and says a firm date should be set soon.

In advance of an Oct. 25 DVD release in Canada, Vincenzo Natali’s Nothing is being given an exclusive platform run in Japan through distributor and investor Clockworx. It opened in a single theater Sept. 17 in Tokyo, where the director hopes to recapture some of the box-office luster of 1998’s Cube.

‘If anyone can appreciate [Nothing], it’s the Japanese,’ says Natali, whose recently completed doc on Tideland helmer Terry Gilliam will air on Mpix in the fall.

With files from Mark Dillon and Marcus Robinson.