The Société de développement des entreprises culturelle (SODEC) has selected 15 feature projects for production and post-production assistance for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

A total of eight minority coproductions were chosen under the production assistance program, as well as seven post-production projects, such as Sébastien Gagné’s prize-winning Coco ferme (pictured) and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia (Vowels Films Productions). The minority copro partners range from France, Poland, Belgium, and Germany.

Of the eight copros selected, five are French-language productions and three are English-language. Three of the Francophone features are copros with France: Fanon, directed by Jean-Claude Barny written by Barny and Philippe Bernard, with Périphéria as the Quebec producer and Axia Films attached as the Quebec distributor; Kina et Yuk (réfugiés de la banquise), directed by Guillaume Maidatchevsky, and co-written by Maidatchevsky and Guillaume Lonergan, with Christal Films coproducing and Les Films Opale distributing; and Petit Jésus, written and directed by Julien Rigoulot, with Item 7 as the Quebec producer and Sphere Films as distributor.

The other French-language features include Belgium copro L’enfant bélier, written and directed by Marta Bergman, with Quebec producer Productions des Années lumière and distributor Axia Films; and Canada/France/Belgium copro Le successeur, directed by Xavier Legrand, co-written by Legrand and Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf, coproduced by Metafilms with Entract Films distributing.

The three English-language films include Poland copro Irena’s Vow, directed by Louise Archambault and written by Dan Gordon, with Entract Films producing in Quebec via sister company Entract Studios, as well as distributing; German copro The Last Whale Singer, co-directed by Reza Memari and Steven Majaury, and written by Memari, with La Boîte à Fanny as Quebec producer; and interprovincial copro Opus 28, directed by Sofia Bohdanowicz, and co-written by Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell, with GreenGround Productions coproducing.

Additional films that received post-production support under the program include Anh Minh Truong’s Des hommes la nuit, Édouard Albernhe-Tremblay’s Belgium copro Farador, Ariane Falardeau St-Amour and Paul Chotel’s Desvio de noche, Henry Bernadet’s Les rayons gamma, and Christian de la Cortina’s Undocumented.

Photo by Laurence Grandbois-Bernard