He’s busy stateside as a music video director for Justin Bieber, Drake, Kanye West and Iggy Azalea.

But now Director X, a.k.a. Julien Christian Lutz, is shooting his feature directorial debut Undone, a Canadian racial drama based on a script by Floyd Kane.

“X is a much-in-demand music video and commercial director,” Kane told Playback Daily about Lutz, who he first met 18 months ago at a CBC event and with whom he immediately talked about co-writing a project.

But then another director attached to Undone exited, and Lutz boarded Kane’s film about three students at a Nova Scotia high school whose lives are torn apart by racism.

The movie, now shooting in Halifax and starring Stephan James, Sarah Jeffery and Steven Love, was originally written as a docu-drama set in 1989 during a true-life Coal Harbour District High School riot.

But for financial reasons, Undone is being set in contemporary times, which suits Kane after recent events around fraught American race relations made the timing for his film, and a possible U.S. sale, opportune.

“With everything happening in New York and Ferguson, it kind of gives the words of the script a different intention for the actors,” he said.

Undone is produced by Freddie Films and Circle Blue Films. DHX Media is the Nova Scotia coproducer.

The film has financing from Telefilm Canada, the Harold Greenberg Fund and Film and Creative Industries Nova Scotia.

Phase Four will release Undone in Canada.

Photo credit:  Dan Callis