Hamilton, ON: It will reflect very well on the team behind the World War Two drama The Poet if the scenes of 1940s Poland hold up under close inspection, given that they were shot in a quiet, lovely and in no way war-torn conservation area just outside Hamilton, ON.

‘I know, it sounds silly,’ says producer Lowell Conn. But he insists the footage looks ‘tremendous’ despite the unlikely location, passing credit to line producers Joe Barzo and Nan Skiba. ‘They really modeled rural Poland… we’re really excited about how it looks.’

The feature by newly formed Alchemist Entertainment in Toronto wrapped its 18-day shoot last month and is now in the hands of editor Joe Weadick (King of Sorrow, One Eyed King).

The $11-million picture stars Jonathan Scarfe (Burn: The Robert Wraight Story) as a disenchanted Nazi officer stationed in occupied Poland, where he meets and falls for Rachel, the daughter of a rabbi, played by Nina Dobrev (How She Move). Kim Coates (Silent Hill) plays the young man’s father, while Colm Feore (Bon Cop, Bad Cop) steps in as his commanding officer. Roy Scheider and Daryl Hannah also star.

This is Alchemist’s first project, but certainly not the first time Conn has worked with director Damian Lee. The two were until recently attached to Noble House Entertainment, a name that has come and gone in various forms from the Toronto production scene for many years. The company resurfaced last year, looking to divide its time between prestige projects and lower-budget potboilers, and had some success on the festival circuit with its drama King of Sorrow.

Conn and Lee have since left Noble House, which changed its name to LiveReel Media Corporation in October. The pair wants to focus on making movies, and let ‘other people run corporations,’ says Conn, though Alchemist and LiveReel continue to work together. The latter is among The Poet’s financers.

Conn, Lee and Simon Williams produce The Poet, under first-time exec producer Kim Coates. The script comes from first-time screenwriter Jack Crystal who, at 83, recently shopped a stack of scripts to the Alchemist gang.

‘He’s a lawyer,’ since retired to the tropics, says Conn. ‘He spent his entire life in the corporate world and he’s… been writing all this time. His family, nobody knew he was a writer.’

The Poet will be distributed in Canada by Peace Arch Entertainment.

A big-budget biopic about composer Frédéric Chopin, originally on the Noble House slate, remains in long-term development with Alchemist, says Conn. The company’s next shoot looks to be the cop drama Forgiven, likely to go this spring.