CineCoup has named the five projects and filmmaker teams who have risen to the top of the 2015 edition of its film accelerator competition.

The top five projects are A Western from Vancouver’s Alex Simon, Alex Parra and Noah Dennis; Across All Galaxies from Elvis Deane, Andrew Hopps and Sara Miller of Toronto; Hellmington from Toronto team Alex Lee Williams, Michelle Aseltine and Justin Hewitt-Drakulic; High School Brawl from Edmonton’s Aaron Kurmey, Ryan Hatt and Kevin Johnson; and Black Land from Vancouver’s Adam Dent, Shaine Jones and Nick Marley.

The top five teams will be flown to the Banff World Media Festival, where they will pitch their feature to a panel which includes producer Dan Goldberg (Meatballs, Hangover series), Michael Kennedy, EVP of filmed entertainment at Cineplex Entertainment and Susan Curran, director of marketing at Starz Home Entertainment. The victorious project will be greenlit and earn its team up to $1 million to produce a feature-length film.

For this year’s accelerator, entrants were tasked with creating “high-concept stories with franchise potential.” Applicants entered 60-second trailers for their projects in the horror, thriller, action or sci-fi genres, which were narrowed down to a top 15 two weeks ago. The Banff World Media Festival kicks off on June 7, with the CineCoup pitch session to be held on June 8.

Pictured: CineCoup CEO J. Joly