MONTREAL: When the 31st annual World Film Festival opens on Thursday, you can bet that Serge Losique will be wearing a smile.

While many observers had written off the fest that Losique built, here it is, launching yet another edition. The WFF still lags far, far behind the Toronto International Film Festival in terms of industry relevance, but just the fact that it will offer another smorgasbord of international movies is a testament to its head man’s perseverance.

And not only that, but Losique is also getting public film funding again, a couple of years after being cut off. SODEC has committed $200,000 to this year’s WFF, and while Telefilm Canada has been expected to follow suit, the federal agency — even on the very day of the festival’s opening – still could not confirm whether it was giving financial support to the event.

Just three years ago, a study was released criticizing WFF management for being distant, difficult and ineffectual, and as a result Telefilm and SODEC took their combined total of $1 million in annual funding and put it behind the ill-fated, now-defunct New Montreal FilmFest in 2005.

But that’s all history now, and the WFF is going forward this year in four downtown Montreal theaters, running until Sept. 3, and, although many top domestic and foreign titles bypass the fest in favor of the more press-friendly Toronto event, Losique is excited about this year’s lineup.

‘We have incredible films from everywhere — Japan, Africa — and great Canadian ones, too,’ he told Playback in a recent interview. ‘I think this has been a particularly strong year for cinema. I’ve seen some work that really impressed me, and we’ll be showing it here.’

The festival will open with local comedy Bluff by first-time feature filmmakers Simon-Olivier Fecteau and Marc-André Lavoie, and starring Rémy Girard and Marc Messier. The plan is for Losique to be accompanied on the red carpet by French actress Sophie Marceau, who will receive a lifetime achievement award. Academy Award winner John Voight will receive a similar honor days later.

Veteran American producer and filmmaker James B. Harris, who produced three early Stanley Kubrick films, including the classic Paths of Glory (1957), and directed The Bedford Incident (1965), will head this year’s festival’s jury, which also includes Quebec filmmaker and actress Denise Filiatrault and Korean thesp Kang Su-Yeon.

Among the Canadian films debuting at the festival is Émile Gaudreault’s dramatic comedy Surviving My Mother, starring Caroline Dhavernas and Colin Mochrie. It will screen in the World Competition showcase, along with Toi, a Quebec romantic drama helmed by François Delisle.

With files from Mark Dillon