MONTREAL — Organizers of Canada’s biggest showcase of homegrown French-language film have taken an unprecedented step: they are reaching out to English-speaking moviegoers.

For the first time in its 26-year history, this week’s Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois is targeting Montreal’s other cultural solitude. This year, the program is bilingual.

And two special series are meant to widen the mainly francophone festival’s audience base: A Taste of Rendez-vous, featuring English-language flicks Silk (Rhombus Media, Bee Vine Pictures), Surviving My Mother (Cinémaginaire) and National Film Board alternative dramas Family Motel and The Point; as well as the Tolérance series, which includes Being Innu (Green Lion Productions) and singer Richard Desjardins’ doc about Quebec’s Algonquin community, Le peuple invisible. A number of the French-language features are also being screened with English subtitles.

Attempting to attract anglophones ‘is an issue which has preoccupied us for a number of years,’ festival head Ségolène Roederer tells Playback Daily. ‘We wanted to attract all Montrealers to the festival.’

‘Quebec cinema means all films made in Quebec. There’s an anglophone cinema community that is very distinct and particular,’ says Roederer.

‘As a filmmaker in Montreal, one is usually either on one side of the fence or the other, which is unfortunate,’ says Montreal filmmaker Joshua Dorsey (The Point). ‘I’m glad they are reaching out, because this offers both communities a chance to make contacts.

The festival is also offering master classes by some of the province’s best-known filmmakers, including Denys Arcand, and a session on financing without government help, an option that’s particularly attractive to young filmmakers, says Roederer.

‘I think filmmakers in their 20s don’t really think they have a shot at getting money. They feel like they are way down on the list behind the big names,’ he says. A crowd of nearly 1,500 packed Montreal’s Place des Arts theater Thursday to watch the festival’s opening feature, the adolescent suicide film Tout est parfait. The RVCQ closes on Feb. 24.