As the fall festival season gets underway, Playback is looking at some of the concerns and hopes of indie sector stakeholders. Part one examined the potential impact the dual U.S. strikes will have on the market. Part two below looks at how the Canadian industry is finding opportunities in a disrupted film landscape.

While strikes from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have added new uncertainties to the market, the film sector in Canada was already dealing with a heavily disrupted market, according to industry stakeholders.

Mark Slone (pictured right), president of Photon Films, says the core difficulties in the indie market have been a reduced buying environment and a change in moviegoing behaviours. The pandemic triggered a “pause in acquiring content” for media companies, and “until consumers revolt about the lack of choice, it’s the reality [for the indie industry],” he says.

When it comes to presales, Slone says a distributor such as Photon Films needs “a certain level of must-haves” before getting involved. The top considerations, he says, are whether a film has a clear target audience and a plan to attract them, followed by how well a director can articulate their vision.

“So much of [the indie sector is] filmmaker-driven, not star-driven,” he says. “A filmmaker has to be able to articulate, ‘here’s the movie I want to make, and here’s who I picture sitting in the cinema watching my movie.’ And if those two things can align, that’s our starting point.”

As for the impact on windowing strategies, Slone says they’re already too disrupted in the indie market. “COVID completely upended all sort of remaining sense of windowing as an orderly affair. And now… the ‘do what you feel’ or ‘do what you and your partners can live with’ [method] has become the norm, as opposed to the standardized windowing.”

From a sales perspective, Jean-Christophe J. Lamontagne, president and founder of h264 says the sales agent is “cautious” about its dealmaking to ensure a distribution partner is on board to support a theatrical release. “We’re working closely with distributors to really see what their strategies are,” he says. “It’s not always about who puts up a bigger minimum guarantee, but who’s going to be doing great work on the ground, to not just release a film straight to VOD or television.”

For films that are landing theatrical releases, Slone says they’re faced with the additional challenge of a shift in audiences.

“The traditional older audience is not yet coming back and, frankly, we can’t say for sure they ever will,” he says. “Maybe Netflix has become familiar enough to that audience that they’re not as interested… for indie [filmmakers] who play to that segment a lot, it’s troubling.”

A March 2023 study from UTA surveying U.S. consumers from ages 15 to 65 said that less than half of consumers from the Boomer generation have returned to a movie theatre since the pandemic began, about 41%.

In comparison, 77% of respondents from Gen Z said they’ve returned to theatres, followed by Millennials at 68% and Gen X at 58%. The survey listed rising costs and health and safety risks as the top reasons consumers have yet to return.

Shifting gears

Rather than rest on their laurels, distributors are adapting their strategies alongside changing moviegoing habits. Slone points to recent Canadian films such as BlackBerry (Rhombus Media, Zapruder Films; pictured left), Infinity Pool (Film Forge, Elevation Pictures) and Riceboy Sleeps (Lonesome Heroes Productions) as examples of films that resonate with younger viewers interested in “non-mainstream or studio” films.

Photon Films is marketing to that segment as well with the upcoming release of Jacqueline Castel’s queer horror My Animal, starring Amandla Stenberg and produced by Canada’s Andrew Bronfman and Michael Solomon.

“Young-skewing independent film is good for Canada, and I think that we can continue to parlay that,” says Slone, referring to Oscar-nominated international titles such as Triangle of Sadness or Aftersun as examples of projects that are art films geared to younger audiences.

Hilary Hart, co-president of Game Theory Films, says the distributor ran a grassroots campaign for Anthony Shim’s semi-autobiographical Riceboy Sleeps, the story of a Korean mother and son as they adapt to life in Vancouver. The campaign included finding ambassadors to speak to the film which, in turn, generated engagement with the film on TikTok, with users discussing how the film personally resonated with them.

“[We received] feedback from the marketing team saying that is what’s working for younger generations: not feeling like they’re being advertised to, but finding a way to get the film in front of people who are then going to tell their peers about it in a very sincere way,” says Hart.

Films like My Animal and Infinity Pool are also part of a growing market interest in genre fare, according to Lamontagne. He says h264 received an “overwhelming” response to Red Rooms — about a woman obsessed with a serial killer — following its debut at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic and awards success at Fantasia.

Another h264 sales title, Ariane Louis-Seize’s Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (Art et essai; pictured right) — which counts Game Theory as its Canadian distributor — has also piqued buyer interest thanks to its unique tale of a vampire unwilling to kill humans for food. Hart says they’re hoping that the title’s quirky twist on the vampire genre will attract viewers who don’t typically tune in to French-language films out of Quebec.

Hope lies close to home

Regardless of the strike fallout, Slone says what may truly turn the tide for Canadian indie film is how Bill C-11, a.k.a. the Online Streaming Act, will be implemented following its passage in April.

He says it is imperative that the CRTC “includes movies as distinct as opposed to just general screen content” when setting modernized regulations for streaming services under the Broadcasting Act. The Commission is currently reviewing hundreds of suggestions from the industry on how to modernize the Act, with a hearing scheduled for November.

Slone points to the rise of pay TV channels such as HBO in the U.S. and The Movie Network and Super Channel in Canada as an example. When those channels fell under regulation to fund development for films, Slone says those were the “prime years” for Canadian film.

“We got all those great [films from] Atom Egoyan, Guy Madden, John Greyson and Léa Pool,” says Slone, also citing extra funds from presales and stronger marketing abilities from the platforms.

“I think this is that opportunity again [with streamers],” he adds. “The ecosystem can restore its health with the infusion of new money, [as long as] C-11 is carefully and thoughtfully implemented with film in mind.”

A version of this story originally appeared in Playback‘s Fall 2023 issue