Telefilm Canada has named five movies and five television comedies as finalists in a new program that supports anglophone writers, directors and producers working in Quebec. And one filmmaker — the veteran Larry Kent in Montreal — has his name on three of the lucky films.

Kent tells Playback Daily he was ‘astonished’ by the results. ‘I’m not sure how that happened,’ he says, ‘But I think they’re three pretty good ideas.’

Kent (The Hamster Cage) is attached to King of Kamookis, about an Inuit man’s search for love, which he wrote, and as a producer to The Modern Vampyre’s Guide to Life and The Trials of Cooper Smithe. Vampyre and Cooper Smithe were penned by his Hamster Cage cowriter Daniel Williams, and Lienne Sawatsky (Delilah & Julius).

The pitches to the Strategic Initiatives program had to be ‘innovative and funny,’ according to Michel Pradier, Telefilm’s director of French operations and its Quebec office, who says there were 26 submissions in all.

‘The strategic plan for this region is to give rise to projects that are comedies, especially, aimed at theatrical release and television broadcast,’ says Pradier. ‘Twenty-six applicants for this region is very good and gives us the opportunity to maybe renew the initiative next year.’

The finalists — chosen by a committee comprised of individuals from the broadcasting, distribution and production sectors — will attend four days of script development and training in Montreal next week delivered by the Canadian Screen Training Centre. Participants will then have eight weeks to prepare a synopsis and key scenes, before the committee chooses one feature film and one television project to receive $20,000 in production funding.

The other film finalists are: Blue Movies by Jennifer Kierans and Debra Kouri, and Peepers from Daniel Perlmutter and Mark Slutsky.

The TV titles are: Four Minutes Apart by Paul Risacher and Marie-Claude Beauchamp; Boomtown Therapy and Drunk.broke, both from producer Brandi-Ann Milbradt; I’ve Still Got It from Catherine Bainbridge; and Veteran Veterinarian by Ziad Touma.