The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its Producers Lab, Pitch This! and Talent Lab participants, and 2013 Rising Stars, in addition to this year’s Canadian film lineup.

The Producers Lab gives Canadian filmmakers the opportunity to network, exchange information and discuss copro opps with international partners, while the Pitch This! feature film competition sees Canadian producers pitch their ideas for a development prize from Telefilm Canada, which this year has been upped to $15,000 from $10,000.

Producers Lab

New this year, the Producers Lab includes two producers each from Australia and New Zealand, in addition to participants from Europe and Canada.

Canadian producers were chosen via the OMDC and a TIFF national open call, while European participants were selected by the European Film Promotion (EFP) network from the Producers on the Move alumni. Screen Australia and the New Zealand Film Commission selected the participants from their respective countries.

This year’s Canadian participants are as follows:

Matthew Cervi, Mad Samurai Productions
Anne-Marie Gélinas, EMAfilms
Jennifer Holness, Hungry Eyes Film & Television
Alex Lalonde, First Generation Films
Mark Montefiore, Montefiore Films
Gerry Lattmann, Dot Com Film Company
Amber Ripley, Foundation Features
Julia Sereny, Sienna Films
Anna Stratton, Triptych Media
Ingrid Veninger, pUNK Films

Pitch This!

The Telefilm Canada Pitch This! competition sees six filmmaking teams pitch their dramatic or doc feature to a jury of experts and a live audience of industry professionals over six minutes. The 2013 competition is set for Sept. 9 at 1 p.m.

This year’s finalists are:

Rumba Kaveh Nabatian
Stay Girl John Christou, Daniel Beirne, Aisling Chin-Yee, Jacob Tierney
Tempest Storm: Burleque Queen Nimisha Mukerji
The Engineers Daniel Cockburn, Daniel Bekerman
Window Watching Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith, Svjetlana Jaklenec , Laura Perlmutter
You Can Live Forever in a Paradise on Earth Mark Slutsky, Sarah Fobes

Talent Lab

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the festival’s Talent Lab, a four-day program for artistic development for Canadian and international talent. The Talent Lab, which features 20 emerging filmmakers, will be lead by mentors including filmmakers Sally Potter and Patricia Rozema, and guests including Kevin Spacey, Jason Reitman, Deepha Mehta, Terry Gilliam and Atom Egoyan. The Talent Lab, produced by Helen du Toit, runs Sept. 4 to 7, 2013.

This year’s Canadian participants are as follows:
Juan Andres Arango
Alexandre Auger
Annick Blanc
Valerie Buhagiar
Naomi Jaye
Jason Lapeyre
Shannon Masters
Evan Morgan
Carlo Guillermo Proto
Grace Wang

Rising Stars

Actors Evelyne Brochu, Cara Gee, Megan Park and Johnathan Sousa will participate in the 2013 TIFF Rising Stars professional development program. The actors will take part in public events and industry meetings during the festival, in addition to an intensive boot camp with international casting directors, agents, managers, producers, filmmakers and development execs. The four also all star in 2013 festival selections.

Brochu stars in Xavier Dolan’s Tom à la ferme, slated for a North American premiere at this festival, also announced Wednesday. She has also starred in the 2009 Denis Villeneuve film Polytechnique, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Café de Flore, and Anais Barbeau-Lavalette’s Inch’Allah. She recently made her English-language TV debut in Temple Street’s Orphan Black.

Gee takes on her first feature film lead in Peter Stebbings’ second feature, Empire of Dirt, which will have its world premiere at this year’s festival. Gee has a slew of theatre credits to her name, including starring roles in Daniel MacIvor’s Arigato, Tokyo and Cliff Cardinal’s Stitch.

Park stars with Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan in Michael Dowse’s F Word, which will bow with its world premiere in the Special Presentations program at this year’s festival. Park also recently starred in Will Canon’s Demonic, and on the TV side, has starred in ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

And Sousa will be seen in Ingrid Veninger’s The Animal Project, which will bow in the Contemporary World Cinema program this year, and in Maxime Desmon’s upcoming feature What We Have. On the small screen, Sousa will star in the upcoming season of Rookie Blue on Global.