All’s well with Serge Losique.

The trial of the 2004 funding ordeal for his Montreal World Film Festival long behind him, the fest director is not especially diplomatic or gracious these days. His festival, now in its 32nd year, is no nearer to Toronto as a commercial gateway into the North American market for European films.

But he doesn’t much care.

‘It’s the same old Montreal World Film Festival. We’re trying every year to find the best in international films, either for competition or other sessions,’ Losique says confidently.

Call him a dictator, but he prefers ‘Le grand timonier,’ or great helmsman – a reference to Chairman Mao.

Declare him unaccountable to Telefilm Canada or SODEC, or unreceptive to the local press? All water off his back.

All that counts is that Losique fought his critics and came out on top.

‘They’re gone and he’s there,’ observes Rock Demers, legendary Quebec producer and longtime Losique supporter.

Of course, it all came at a cost.

‘It’s been tough for him to keep going,’ Demers adds. ‘He has used all his own money in order to keep the festival surviving – to go through the difficult years…What he’s receiving from Telefilm and SODEC is not compensating what he has had to spend from his own money.’

(Telefilm, once a major supporter of the fest, has shrunk its contribution to a $325,000 subsidy for subtitling.)

Never mind the opening-night black-tie gala presentation consists of a mostly local crowd. Never mind the film market in Montreal produces few sales – what else do you expect of a market with virtually all foreign-language fare?

No, Losique isn’t competing with Toronto, which he dismisses as slouching towards Hollywood. His is a competitive film festival, up against Berlin and Venice. And WFF, with this year’s lineup of 234 feature films over 12 days (Aug. 21 to Sept. 1), aims to showcase the best in international cinema, from Turkey to Taiwan.

‘This year there’s real progress in national cinema, with a host of movies from Japan, Israel, Turkey, Russia, France, and also Spain – you have Carlos Saura [Io, Don Giovanni] and [Pedro] Almodóvar [Broken Embraces], but other filmmakers are coming up,’ Losique says of his 2008 lineup.

With closer ties to Cannes and the French film market, WFF will launch this year with Christophe Barratier’s Paris 36 and Quebec features including Stéphane Géhami’s En plein coeur and Benoît Pilon’s Ce qu’il faut pour vivre.

Other European titles booked for competition include Dutch director Arno Dierickx’s Blood Brothers, Ulla Wagner’s The Invention of Curried Sausage from Germany, Serbian filmmaker Goran Markovic’s The Tour, and Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón’s Who’s Next? from Spain

The hunt for the Grand Prix des Amériques will also feature Xavi Puebla’s Welcome to Farewell-Gutmann; Israeli directors Ali Nassar and Eitan Green, screening, respectively, Whispering Embers and All Begins at Sea; Swedish filmmaker Daniel Alfredson’s Wolf; and Flemish director Patrice Toye’s Nowhere Man.

Latin contenders will include Paula Hernandez’s Rain from Argentina and Mexican filmmaker Walter Doehner’s Teo’s Voyage. Asia will contest with two films from Japan – Okuribito from Yojiro Takita and Nobody to Watch Over Me from Ryoichi Kimizuka – Chinese director Zhuo Gehe’s Nima’s Women, Selda by Philippine directors Paolo Villaluna and Ellen Ramos, and from India, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s Chaturanga.

The lone American film in competition at WFF this year is Matthew Wilder’s Your Name Here, the Bill Pullman-starrer about sci-fi writer William J. Frick.

And WFF will, as usual, be short on Hollywood star power. The Hors Concours/World Great sidebar includes screenings of Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which features Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, none of whom is expected to show up.

This year’s festival will also feature a special series devoted to Bavarian cinema, a retrospective of Russian musical comedies from the Soviet era, and a master class by perennial Montreal attendee Brian de Palma.

Also on tap are tributes to Japanese film promoter Kashiko Kawakita and two Hollywood legends: 83-year-old actor Tony Curtis and producer Alan Ladd Jr., who gave the green light to George Lucas for Star Wars.

If anything, Losique’s critics are falling into line to support his festival.

An example is Alliance Films’ Victor Loewy, who got behind the ill-fated rival New Montreal FilmFest – which opened and closed in 2005 – but who this year will throw an Aug. 26 party at WFF and supply opening-night film Paris 36, among others.

Indeed, after the Société générale de financement du Québec paid $100 million for a minority stake in Alliance Films and moved its headquarters to Montreal, the distributor is readying announcements over output deals with New Line Cinema and Relativity Media to be made at Losique’s festival, rather than at TIFF.

For the second year running, WFF has set up shop at the Quartier Latin cinema, just off St-Denis, which has cheered local restaurants and bars benefiting from the bump in business. All in all, WFF has good prospects this year.

‘I think it’s settling down. It’s much more serene than it was last year – and of course a couple of years before,’ Demers concludes.

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