Robert Budreau hopes the festival circuit’s response to That Beautiful Somewhere, starring Quebec thesp Roy Dupuis, will help his debut feature when it starts a platform release Friday, opening on one screen each in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver via Equinoxe Films.

‘It will depend on how it plays in the bigger cities. We hope that it plays well so that we can take it to places like Ottawa, Edmonton and North Bay, where the film was shot,’ the Toronto helmer tells Playback Daily. Beautiful Somewhere played at fests including the Montreal World Film Festival, the Garden State Festival in New Jersey, and the California Independent Film Festival, where it garnered five nominations including best actor and picture.

The $1.5-million film, based on William Plumstead’s novel Loon, stars Dupuis as a detective tasked with identifying a body found in a secluded northern bog, with the help of a young archeologist played by Jane McGregor (Flower and Garnet, Citizen Duane). Gordon Tootoosis (One Dead Indian, Legends of the Fall) also stars as a reclusive aboriginal elder.

Marketing consisted of mainly grassroots promotion, especially involving Dupuis, who, among other things, came to Toronto to participate in national television interviews.

‘Roy helped with that a lot,’ Budreau says, adding that he was able to attract The Rocket star by sending him a script.

‘The first thing that appealed to me was the audacity [of the script],’ says Dupuis. ‘I thought that Robert really took a story and brought it far, especially towards the end, which was a challenge to get to.’

The actor, who says he likes working with directors like Budreau, who ‘stay open to ideas without losing direction,’ was also drawn to the film’s environmental themes and exploration of Indian civilization. ‘To meet them and find out who they are, their way of life, is another aspect I found interesting,’ Dupuis says.

That Beautiful Somewhere arrives alongside other Equinoxe releases including Roger Evan Larry’s thriller Crossing and Douglas Copeland’s comedy Everything’s Gone Green, which made its U.S. debut via First Independent Pictures in New York City on April 13.

‘The response was great,’ says producer Chris Nanos from Toronto-based Radke Films, noting favorable reviews in The New York Times and The Village Voice.

Green expands to Los Angeles and Austin, TX on Friday, and makes its Canadian debut on one screen each in Victoria, Vancouver and Coquitlam, followed by Toronto on April 27.

‘It’s rare for a Canadian film our size to premiere in the U.S. a week before Canada, but we wanted to start in New York for tactical reasons, to get those reviews and leverage off of them and move forward,’ says Nanos, a first-time producer.

U.S. releases this weekend include the hotel horror Vacancy, from Buena Vista, and In the Land of Women, from Warner Bros. Anthony Hopkins stars in the thriller Fractured, carried here by Alliance Atlantis, while its sister distributor Odeon Films handles the U.K. comedy Hot Fuzz.