Jason Priestley’s Cas & Dylan to open Whistler Film Festival

Jason Priestley’s theatrical road movie Cas & Dylan is to open the Whistler Film Festival, organizers said Monday.

Whistler will also close on December 8 with the Canadian premiere of Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel, a documentary about a life-long rivalry between two half-pipe snowboarding legends, Shaun White and Kevin Pearce.

The HBO documentary bowed in Sundance.

Whistler will kick off on Dec. 4 with a screening of Cas & Dylan, the Tatiana Maslany and Richard Dreyfuss-starrer that is expected to first debut at the upcoming Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax.

Cas & Dylan will be one of six titles to compete for Whistler’s Borsos award, with Craig Goodwill’s Patch Town confirmed as another entrant.

Other Whistler titles so far booked by programming director Paul Gratton include Uvanga, co-directed by Marie-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and coming from the producers of Atarjuanat – The Fast Runner.

And Whistler booked a world premiere for Afterparty, from director Michelle Ouellet and starring Ali Liebert, Emma Lahana and Jodi Balfour.

Also screening at the west coast festival is Barry Avrich’s Filthy Gorgeous: The Extraordinary World of Bob Guccione, to bow in Toronto, Sex After Kids, which Jay Brazeau, Mimi Kuzyk, Katie Boland and Kristin Booth, Jane Clark’s Meth Head, and the Benicio Del Toro-starrer Jimmy P.