Montreal’s troubled World Film Festival wrapped on Sept. 4, ending its 12-day 30th edition with generally favorable reviews from industry attendees and local press, despite having gone a second year without funding from Telefilm Canada or SODEC.

The future of the fest has been in some doubt since the federal and provincial agencies pulled their support in 2004.

‘I thought the festival went well this year, and I thought they did an admirable job,’ says Sylvain Gagné, VP of distribution and marketing for Christal Films, which screened two features at WFF. ‘We had packed houses and people enjoyed the movies.’

Christal brought The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters, a France/Canada copro by director Dai Sijie, and Stéphane Lapointe’s La vie secrète des gens heureux, which opened in theaters directly after its premiere closed WFF on Sept. 4.

‘The World Film Festival is really a festival for the public. The industry has gone to Toronto, yes, but the public still enjoys the World Fest,’ Gagné adds.

WFF had no precise numbers to offer, but many attendees reported full to almost-full houses.

‘Everywhere I saw a film, there was a good crowd,’ says Rick Winston, co-owner of the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, Vermont, who has come to the WFF for a decade to choose ‘unusual international films’ to screen at his cinema.

‘There were some very good films here. You had to do some research, because they weren’t films that had a lot of publicity surrounding them, but they were good,’ he adds.

But critics took a dim view of this year’s lineup of movies, and, post-festival, continued to question its future, as did John Griffin in the Montreal Gazette. Montreal’s La Presse also noted that WFF audiences are older, making the fest’s future feel precarious.

‘They need to work on getting a younger audience; they need a Midnight Madness,’ says Gagné, referring to the hip, edgy program at TIFF.

Robert Budreau, who premiered his directorial debut That Beautiful Somewhere (see sidebar), also gave WFF a better-than-average grade.

‘Compared to many of the other festivals I’ve attended, I was impressed. We were treated very well,’ he says. ‘Since the good press we got out of the premiere, we have had several promising meetings with distributors. At the Toronto festival, I suspect that a smaller Canadian film like ours would have gotten lost.’

At WFF’s closing ceremonies, the winner of the Grand Prize of the Americas was a tie between Nagai Sanpo, about a widowed school principal, from Japanese director Eiji Okuda, and O Maior Amor do Mundo, about a dying astrophysicist, by Brazil’s Carlos Diegues.

Montreal DOP Guy Dufaux took the win for greatest artistic contribution for his work on The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters. The film also scored public awards as both the most popular film, and most popular Canadian film, at WFF. The fest’s special jury prize went to Snow in the Wind by China’s Yang Yazhou.

WFF founder and chief Serge Losique announced that the 31st festival will take place from Aug. 23 to Sept. 3, 2007.

www.ffm-montreal.org