Montreal: There was no end in sight for Montreal’s bruising three-way film festival war, with the final fest of the season, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, opening with a salvo from none other than auteur Atom Egoyan.

Egoyan had sent an e-mail to FNC founder and director Claude Chamberlan, which was read at the festival’s opening-night ceremony at the Imperial Cinema on Oct. 13. Egoyan stated that ‘I have only one major regret in my career,’ that being that his distributor for Where the Truth Lies could not delay its release, meaning that it had made its local premiere at the New Montreal FilmFest, not at FNC.

That set Egoyan up for a dig at the inaugural edition of the NMFF. ‘Instead, I had the very strange experience two weeks ago of walking down a red carpet where I was the only person in sight. No cheering crowd. No journalists. No cameras.’

The upstart NMFF, organized by L’Équipe Spectra, is intended to ultimately supplant the city’s other major fête, the World Film Festival.

Egoyan went on to call the FNC ‘a cherished event,’ stating that ‘next time, I will bring my own little red carpet which I will unfold in front of your feet with love and admiration.’

The love-in didn’t stop there, with famed director Wim Wenders also writing that ‘it is with greatest pleasure, pride and satisfaction that I see my favourite film festival in the world rise like a phoenix from the ashes.’ Wenders does not have a film at FNC.

Both Egoyan and Wenders, who have long associations with the FNC, were clearly referring to the city’s rocky year in festival politics, which, by some accounts, could have led to the demise of FNC. The statements were followed by the FNC’s opening film, L’Enfant from Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, the celebrated French film about a young man’s coming to terms with fatherhood.

The 10-day FNC appears to be on solid footing. The fest’s opening weekend featured near-to-sold-out houses as well as generally amiable responses from the local press, unlike the season’s previous two festivals.

If a hit had emerged by the first weekend, it was the oddball mockumentary Greg & Gentillon, in which two hapless Quebecois comics go to Toronto to make it big, despite a string of lacklustre gags and somewhat limited English-language skills. Directed by Matthiew Klinck, the hilarious faux-doc is an intriguing mix of fiction and documentary styles.

www.nouveaufestival.ca