MONTREAL — As global financial markets collapse, the opening film of the 37th annual Festival du Nouveau Cinema was apropos: Un capitalisme sentimental takes a comical look at the speculative marketplace.

Director Olivier Asselin tells the story of Fernande Bouvier (Lucille Fluet), a talentless Paris artist whose name becomes overvalued in the stock market when a sleazy financier takes her to America. Ultimately the speculation causes the fall of the stock market in 1929.

‘The market is purely speculative. Her work has no intrinsic value, but it becomes worth something because her backers make people think they want it,’ the director tells Playback Daily. ‘We have interiorized this system. Why does a lawyer earn $300 per minute and a laborer so much less?’

Produced by Asselin and Arrimage Productions, the $1.2-million film stars Paul Ahmarani (Congorama) and Sylvie Moreau (Camping sauvage). The cast and crew deferred 20% of their salaries so the project could be completed. Denis Villeneuve’s prize-winning short Next Floor was screened before Asselin’s film.

Roughly 1,000 attended the screening at Montreal’s downtown Imperial Cinema, which included a rambling speech/performance by festival co-director Claude Chamberlan, who did a rather comical wardrobe change on stage, donning his signature wolf T-shirt and what appeared to be an oversized gold silk dinner jacket.

‘This is your festival. We bring the world’s best films to you,’ Chamberlan told the audience. ‘The FNC is the film festival of Montreal,’ making a jibe at the World Film Festival, which has been struggling to re-establish its reputation after its funding was yanked by Telefilm Canada and SODEC for alleged mismanagement in 2005, and only partially reinstated.

While thanking his youthful team, Chamberlan, who has been with the festival since its beginnings, even talked of ‘passing the torch’ to the next generation.

While Chamberlan was working the crowd for laughs, his co-director Nicolas Girard-Deltruc got serious. ‘In these challenging times for the cultural sector we need your support more than ever. If you were going to attend one event, go to two instead,’ Girard-Deltruc told the audience. ‘If you were going to attend a film alone, bring along some friends.’

The 11-day festival will screen nearly 250 films from 60 countries.

Over 100,000 attended the FNC last year, which views itself as a ‘festival for cinema lovers,’ according to a spokesman. ‘We don’t have specific industry events. We view Cannes and TIFF as the main film business events. We are for cinephiles.’