Director Johnny Kalangis is content to be opening the drama Love Is Work, his follow-up to 1998’s Jack & Jill, Friday on one screen in Toronto, despite being in the midst of summer Hollywood sequels including Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and this week’s Ocean’s Thirteen.

‘This film is not for that audience so we’re not competing with them,’ Kalangis tells Playback Daily, adding ‘there isn’t a lot out there right now for those who like relationship movies.’

Last year’s audience choice winner at the Whistler International Film Festival, Love Is Work is distributed by Kalangis and exhibition expert Ken Prue of Tall Pine Films, with financial assistance from Telefilm Canada’s Alternative Distribution Networks program.

‘Traditionally, that fund is triggered when you haven’t got a more formal distributor on board… but you can trigger it with an exhibitor, which is where Ken came in,’ Kalangis explains. Marketing and promotion consisted of postering campaigns, a page on myspace.com, and coverage in newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Toronto local Eye Weekly.

The film, starring Fabrizio Filippo (Billable Hours) and Shauna MacDonald (ReGenesis), follows five couples through the trials and tribulations of middle-class life and love. The drama will expand to Calgary and Vancouver on June 15.

‘We’d like to expand to Edmonton, Ottawa and London, but we’re still trying to decide whether it’s better to do more promotion in Calgary and Vancouver than it is to open with limited promotion in a smaller place,’ Kalangis says.

Love Is Work has been picked up for international distribution by Toronto-based Sullivan Entertainment.

Also arriving in theaters Friday are Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! , which was shot as a silent and features narration by Isabella Rossellini. It opens on one screen each in Toronto, Vancouver and Maddin’s hometown of Winnipeg, via Toronto distributor filmswelike. Brain will expand to markets including Edmonton and Victoria in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Mongrel Media is releasing the comedy Angel-A, from French director Luc Besson, on two screens in Toronto and one in Vancouver, and the Swiss drama Vitus on one screen in Montreal. TVA Films will open the French title La vie en rose on one screen each in Toronto and Vancouver, while Christal Films is releasing the Italian drama Nuovomondo (‘Golden Door’) on three screens in Montreal and one in Quebec City. Nuovomondo will expand to Toronto and Vancouver next week.

U.S. releases for the frame include Eli Roth’s horror follow-up Hostel: Part II, distributed here by Maple Pictures, Ocean’s Thirteen from Warner Bros. and the animated Surf’s Up from Columbia.