The inaugural Canadian Film Market kicks off in Hamilton, ON on Thursday and its director, Nathan Fleet, hopes it’s the first of many.

Fleet, who runs the Hamilton Film Festival – now in it’s 11th year – said there was a need for a smaller-scale market that could bring films that were “flying under the radar” to the attention of buyers.

“The world markets are so expensive to attend, so we figured there are these great films, filmmakers are making them but they don’t have money to get to some of these larger markets. So we thought why don’t we just do something that’s affordable for filmmakers to opt into?” Fleet told Playback Daily.

The market this year received 124 films from approximately 23 countries and is expecting around 17 distributors to participate.

On the filmmaker side, the market is meant to provide a more intimate and accessible setting for indie filmmakers to compete for buyers’ attention. Their films are one of 120, rather than one of 2,000 at other larger markets, said Fleet. On the distributor side, Fleet said the market has attracted mainly local buyers.

“We’re not expecting a lot of big name distributors coming, which is fine. This is exactly where we want to be in year one. We just want to get the word out and hope the distributors find value in what we’re bringing and then we just expand from that,” he said.

Already, Fleet said, there’s a buzz building around some of the titles that have screened at the film festival, which opened Nov. 5 and runs to Nov. 13.

“I’m pretty confident there will be some movies acquired in a few days, which would be great, because that would be something perfect that we could expand on next year.”

In addition to the market, there are a number of industry events taking place, including a VR panel focusing on narrative storytelling and presented by Interactive Ontario; a distribution panel featuring Riverside Entertainment’s Fred Fuchs, United Front Entertainment’s Susan Curran, Indiecan Entertainment Avi Federgreen and Ouat Media’s Inga Diev; as well as the “Page Turner” event that aims to pair authors and screenwriters with producers looking for new story ideas.

Ultimately, Fleet hopes to not only grow the festival and market, but to help support the Hamilton film industry as a whole. “We wanted to create that full circle where you could make a movie here, you could screen a movie here and also sell a movie here,” he said.

As for that other market happening in California right now, Fleet said it wasn’t his intention to time his market alongside the end of the American Film Market. The Hamilton Film Festival has always taken place the first week of November, he said, and it made sense to launch the Canadian Film Market during the festival. In future, if the market grows, he might consider moving it to another week.

The Canadian Film Market runs Nov. 10 to 13 at the Sheraton Hamilton Hotel in Hamilton, ON. 

Image via Shutterstock