One of Quebec’s only distributors of auteur cinema is paying three Quebec writers to finish their screenplays because he’s afraid their ideas may never make it to the big screen.

‘As a distributer I see too many scripts that aren’t good that will likely get money from places like SODEC and Telefilm, and too many ideas that are really good that don’t get supported at the script stage,’ says K-Films Amerique’s Louis Dussault, who distributes award-winning films such as Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mere (I Killed My Mother) and Bernard Emond’s recent La Donation (The Legacy), the third in his trilogy about faith, hope and charity.

Dussault is paying the screenwriters $600 per week over 15 weeks to write a feature with a budget of not more than $1 million, a gesture that may be one of the first of its kind in the history of Quebec and Canadian cinema. The scripts will then be submitted to financing agencies for production support.

Dussault believes funding bodies often support projects they hope will have wide popular appeal rather those with an original artistic vision.

”These writers I’m supporting need this money to write, otherwise they would have to do something else to make a living. That’s a waste of talent,’ he says.

The distributor picked the three writers because they are talented and have original ideas.

The three projects are: Mon voyage en Europe by writer-director Gilles Noël, about a 17-year-old Quebecer who travels to Europe and gets caught up in the politics of the Vietnam War; Chambres closes by short-filmmaker Etienne Desrosiers, about a young opera singer; and Aller simple pour Hong Kong which follows a young woman who goes to Asia to teach.

Dussault says he hopes that other distributors will follow suit.