Now, that’s some irony. David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises earns a Genie Award nomination for best Canadian film as well as a BAFTA nomination for best British film.

In an industry where everyone takes credit for everything, we shouldn’t be surprised that Eastern Promises has people waving flags on both sides of the Atlantic.

Canadians have certainly embraced Cronenberg’s crime thriller. Genie voters gave Eastern Promises a dozen nominations; it won the audience award at TIFF, and earned $3.2 million at the domestic box office.

On news Eastern Promises had surpassed $50 million at the international box office, a justifiably proud Robert Lantos, the film’s Toronto producer, proclaimed it ‘one of the top-grossing Canadian films of all time.’

The thing is, the Brits are equally tribal about their own movies.

Eastern Promises, also produced by former Film Four head Paul Webster’s Kudos Pictures, will compete at the BAFTAs for best British film alongside the likes of The Bourne Ultimatum.

The Matt Damon-starrer was directed by Briton Paul Greengrass, but its creative was driven from Hollywood by Universal Pictures.

The UK Film Council isn’t quibbling. So why should we quibble about Eastern Promises?

Because Ottawa has made a habit of urging domestic filmmakers to ‘tell Canadian stories.’ And now Telefilm Canada dollars from Lantos’ development envelope have gone into a British story about Russian mobsters in London.

This hardly matters to ordinary Canadians. In a world of intricate and often hidden links, movies like Eastern Promises – made with two or more international partners – have become a Rorschach test. Movie-watchers look at the screen credits and see what they want to see.

Cronenberg and Eastern Promises standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the BAFTAs or the Oscars – lead actor Viggo Mortensen is nominated at both – with rival crime dramas like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood rightly fills Canadians with pride and self-admiration.

And it’s natural for Cronenberg to direct Eastern Promises. In an increasingly borderless film industry, directors have to be flexible.

Cronenberg the chameleon easily shifts between countries, genres, cultures and even personas. One day he’s a Canadian in Toronto, on another an auteur in London, and on still another he’s a world-class director in Hollywood, where nationality counts for little.

But Canadian taxpayer dollars helping underwrite Eastern Promises should give the Canadian film industry pause. The movie has hired-gun Cronenberg behind the camera, yet it features a foreign writer and actors and, below the line, is virtually all British money (80%) and crew.

By this logic, Titanic was a Canadian movie. And Eastern Promises is hardly an indie Canadian movie in the classic sense. It’s really a British movie beautifully crafted by a Canadian director at the top of his game.

Realists will argue we need to face up to ‘production realities.’ Eastern Promises has the stamp of longtime Cronenberg collaborators like lenser Peter Suschitzky, editor Ronald Sanders, composer Howard Shore and costume designer Denise Cronenberg, the director’s sister. The movie qualifies as ‘Canadian’ for the purposes of federal government support and the Genies, while at the same time suiting the needs of BBC Films and Focus Features, its U.S. distributor.

That may be so. But the fact that the Genies trumpet Eastern Promises as a Canadian film only underlines just how far domestic film policy has moved from a long-standing commitment to sustain Canadian storytelling to now aiming to expose Canadian talent abroad.

No wonder. Scarce taxpayer dollars for homegrown movies has Ottawa urging veteran Canadian directors to pact with foreign financiers to fund projects over $7 million. If you have international coproduction partners, more can be done, the argument goes.

Yet we also have to consider what we lose by accepting less Canadian perspective in our films to secure foreign dollars and markets for our movies.

Canadian film has increasingly become a marriage between nationalism and trans-nationalism. Films like Eastern Promises or François Girard’s Silk don’t so much reflect Canadian culture as allow Canadians to take stock of our place in the world, whether that be in Hollywood or the global economy.

Seeing Eastern Promises contend for BAFTAs and an Oscar validates Canadian nationhood by allowing us to fly the flag and pump our fists should an awards presenter call out Cronenberg’s name and make him king for a day.

And that, as Cronenberg clears space on his mantel for another Genie or a BAFTA, may matter more to Canadians and their film industry than all else.