Canadian writer-director Ally Pankiw’s dark comedy I Used To Be Funny will have its world premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas in March, where several other homegrown projects will also bow.

Pankiw (Feel Good, Shrill, Schitt’s Creek) made her feature debut as writer-director on the film (pictured), which is produced by James Weyman of Barn 12, Jason Aita, and Breann Smordin. The executive producers are Li-Wei Chu, Pankiw, Judy Holm, Paul Barkin, Mark Gingras, John Laing, and Jordan Nahmias.

I Used To Be Funny will screen in SXSW’s Narrative Feature Competition. Toronto-based levelFILM is the Canadian distributor for the project, which has been sold to Crave and was previously titled Brooke & Sam. WME Independent is repping the film rights outside of Canada.

Financing for the project came from Telefilm, Ontario Creates, Bell Media, tax credits and some private investment, Weyman tells Playback Daily. The film’s budget was not provided.

I Used To Be Funny features a stand-up comedian who is struggling with PTSD as she considers joining the search for a missing teenage girl she used to nanny. The cast includes Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones, Sabrina Jalees, Caleb Hearon, Ennis Esmer, and Dani Kind.

Weyman says SXSW is a perfect platform to premiere the film because it is “a film festival, a comedy festival and a music festival rolled into one. I Used To Be Funny has all of that, with an incredible ensemble of comic actors and a great soundtrack. Plus, South By loves our star, Rachel Sennott, who had her last two films launch there (Shiva Baby; Bodies Bodies Bodies) and they went on to great success.”

Canadian filmmaker Molly McGlynn’s feature Bloody Hell will also make its world premiere as part of the Narrative Spotlight program. McGlynn wrote and directed the feature, which was filmed in Sudbury, Ont., in 2022. Maddie Ziegler stars as a teenager with a reproductive condition that impacts her relationship with her mother, played by Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek).

Bloody Hell is produced by Toronto-based Jennifer Weiss and Liane Cunje, with musician and actor Janelle Monae (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery) serving as executive producer alongside McGlynn, Brendan Brady, and Mikael Moore. Elevation Pictures is the Canadian distributor, with Blue Fox Entertainment handling worldwide sales and WME co-repping U.S. sales.

Other Canadian world premieres at this year’s SXSW festival include scripted comedy series Slip from Boat Rocker Studios and Dakota Johnson’s banner TeaTime Pictures. Roku commissioned the Toronto-filmed project, which was created by U.S. actor and filmmaker Zoe Lister-Jones, who is the star, director, screenwriter and showrunner. The producers are Lister-Jones, Ro Donnelly, Johnson, Katie O’Connell-Marsh, David Fortier, and Ivan Schneeberg.

Les Battues (The Fading) from director/screenwriter Rafaël Beauchamp and producer Léonie Hurtubise is in the Narrative Shorts Competition. The French-language drama, executive produced by Fanny Drew and Sarah Mannering, centres on the tragedy of a grieving mother in rural Quebec. Montreal-based h264 is the distributor.

In the Music Video Competition is Different Than Before, written and directed by Vancouver-based Mayumi Yoshida for performer Amanda Sum. Yoshida and Sum are also among the producers, who also include Sebastien Galina and Lynne Lee. Galina is the executive producer.

Forager: Immersive Multi-sensory Experience is a Canada-U.S. copro in the XR Experience Competition. Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Winslow Porter and Elie Zananiri directed and co-wrote the immersive, multi-sensory experience about the life-cycle of mushrooms. Porter and Casta Zhu produced the project, which was also written by Adam Lerman and Daniel Perlin.

Also in the XR Experience Competition is Whipped Cream “The Dark,” directed by Vancouver Island-based DJ and producer Caroline Cecil (a.k.a Whipped Cream) and Will Selviz. Cecil also wrote the project, which is produced by Brenda Medina Carmona and executive produced by Adam Rogers and Tabitha Neudorf. The VR experience blends electronic dance music and opera with photorealistic holographic performances.

Making its U.S. premiere in the XR Experience Spotlight is Canada’s Lou from directors Martine Asselin and Annick Daigneault, and producers John Hamilton and Sebastien Gros. Annick Daigneault, Martine Asselin, and Louis-François Archambault-Therrien are the screenwriters on the project, which allows viewers to experience the world with the sensitivity of a person on the autism spectrum.

Mariah Owen of Toronto is the executive producer behind the U.S. romantic dramedy Scrambled, which is making its world premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition. Leah McKendrick wrote and directed the film, which is produced by Gillian Bohrer, Jonathan Levine, Brett Haley, and Amanda Mortimer. McKendrick also acts in the story of a 30-something woman who examines her life as she freezes her eggs in response to fertility concerns.

SXSW runs from March 10 to 19.

Photo courtesy of Barn 12