Jason Loftus’s Eternal Spring has been chosen as Canada’s entry for Best International Feature Film for the 95th Academy Awards, striking off a number of firsts for this country’s Oscars race in that category.

Produced by Lofty Sky Entertainment, Eternal Spring is the first Mandarin-language film, the first animated feature and the first documentary to be submitted by Canada for that particular trophy, Telefilm Canada announced on Wednesday (Aug. 24). It was selected from among 16 films submitted to the pan-Canadian selection committee of some 20 members representing key government agencies and national film industry associations.

Loftus directed and produced the 86-minute film, which is also produced by Yvan Pinard and Kevin Koo. Masha Loftus, the director’s filmmaking partner and wife, is the executive producer.

Combining live-action footage with 3D animation inspired by the art of exiled Chinese comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), the film retraces the 2002 hacking of a state TV signal in China by members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Daxiong, a Falun Gong practitioner, was forced to flee to North America at the time as police raids swept Changchun City in Northeast China. (Masha Loftus is originally from that same city.)

Eternal Spring already has major recognition. In May it won the Hot Docs Audience Award at the Hot Docs festival and took the first-place $25,000 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary.

But being chosen for the Oscars race is “a game-changer,” Loftus told Playback Daily during a virtual press conference on Wednesday.

“We’re in theatres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal on Sept. 23, levelFILM is working with us on a theatrical release. Hoping we can widen that out with the attention that this will provide to us, and we will be in theatres in the U.S., Australia, U.K. and the Netherlands as well this fall,” he said. “Obviously we’re going to take a little time and process this, but we’re already moving very quickly with [a campaign], so this will just open up many more opportunities for us.”

Sideways Film is the international sales agent for Eternal Spring, which can receive up to $150,000 from Telefilm toward the Oscar campaign, depending on how far it gets in the race.

While the film was created for the theatrical experience first and foremost — in the 2.39:1 format, the widest aspect ratio common in modern cinema — Loftus revealed it has secured a yet-to-be-announced “major platform sale,” he added. “It covers the English-language market worldwide, we have a number of other wonderful broadcast partners in Europe and other territories who are also on board with the film. So we’re thrilled. In 2023, it will see a very, very wide audience that way.”

A “passion project” made over five or six years,  Eternal Spring was financed with “a lot more sweat equity … in some cases than the financial equity would recognize,” said Loftus.

“We’ve had a number of projects on the digital side of things with [Canada Media Fund] CMF over time that allowed us to develop some of the concepts of what we wanted to do here. We were working with apps and VR — we will have a VR accompaniment that tells a story from another perspective — and that allowed us to build some of the assets and models and these kinds of things.”

The film came together with a combination of producer equity, some CMF support that kept the project afloat during the earlier stages of the pandemic, a research grant ignited by some of the innovative work they were doing, and tax credits at the federal and provincial level.

“That plus a lot of people who poured a lot more heart into it than the budget would reflect,” said Loftus.

In the history of the Oscars, eight Canadian films have secured official nominations in the Best International Feature Film (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) category. Submitted films must have been produced outside the U.S. in a language other than English and must have been theatrically exhibited in the submitting country for at least seven consecutive days between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30.

A short list of 15 films will be announced on Dec. 21, and the chosen five official nominees will be revealed on Jan. 24, 2023. The  Oscars will be held on March 12, 2023.

Last year, Ivan Grbovic’s Drunken Birds (Les oiseaux ivres) was chosen to represent Canada in the Oscars race. It ultimately didn’t make the final cut of nominees.

Photo credit: Copyright Lofty Sky Pictures