The Tracey Fragments is back at the Royal theater in Toronto, playing to a much larger crowd than last time. The latest by Bruce McDonald was mixed in the art deco movie house about a year ago, and on Friday it’s back, playing in limited release via Odeon Films.

Opening at the Royal was, until recently, not something to brag about. Despite the architecture and prime location, it, like the other rep theaters in the former Festival Cinemas chain, was often a screen of last resort for filmmakers and distributors and their new releases. Then Theatre D Digital bought it and converted it into a giant post facility. It screens movies for the public at night in what, now, is probably one of the better theaters in the city. Theatre D has a similar setup at Toronto’s uptown Regent venue.

McDonald tells Playback Daily he was pushing to open Tracey at the Royal, noting ‘we have a deep attachment’ to the renovated theater. The picture also bows on one screen each in Vancouver and Montreal.

‘Nowhere else in the world can you go see a movie in the exact facility it was produced in,’ says Theatre D cofounder Dan Peel, noting the response from local filmmakers to the newly transformed Royal has been ‘excellent.’ The theater has been upgraded with a new digital projector, Dolby 5.1 sound system, sound panels, a refurbished floor and a new lobby.

Peel says Theatre D just finished work at the Royal on the children’s animated feature Veggie Tales for Universal Studios.

McDonald, meanwhile, has ‘high hopes’ for Tracey, which stars Canuck thesp Ellen Page as a teenager on a search for her missing younger brother.

‘Ideally, if business is good, we’ll play in other theaters in the coming weeks,’ says McDonald, who is currently filming season four of CTV’s Instant Star at Epitome Pictures. Tracey, which garnered accolades at the recent Berlin and Atlantic film festivals, opens in the U.K. and U.S. in the spring.

Tracey arrives with Bryan Friedman’s The Bodybuilder and I, about the filmmaker’s relationship with his boudybuilding father — in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa through January Films. The film was voted best Canadian feature documentary at this year’s Hot Docs.

Meanwhile, director Émile Gaudreault’s Surviving My Mother, his follow-up to 2003’s Mambo Italiano, bows on 57 screens in Quebec through Alliance Vivafilm. The dramedy, about the complex relationship between a mother and daughter, starring Caroline Dhavernas, also opens at Toronto’s Cumberland and Ottawa’s Tinseltown via its sister Odeon. It expands to Vancouver next week.

Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu opens exclusively in Toronto and Vancouver through Mongrel Media, while U.S. indie title Lars and the Real Girl, handled here by Equinoxe Films, bows on 11 screens in those cities. Equinoxe is also releasing the French comedy Michou d’Auber, starring Gérard Depardieu, on 12 screens in la belle province Friday.

Among U.S. releases opening wide is Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, from Universal Pictures, and DreamWorks’ Bee Movie, featuring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger.