La Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles (SODEC) has selected 13 documentaries for funding under its production assistance program.

The projects include nine feature and four medium-length docs. The program received a total of 26 submissions in this round, according to a news release.

Two of the feature-length projects are produced by Les Films de l’Autre and distributed by Les Films du 3 Mars: writer-director François Jacob’s En orbite, which looks at tax havens; and writer-director Simon Plouffe’s Les yeux ne font pas le regard, about people who lost their sight during armed conflicts around the world.

K-Films Amérique is the distributor for two other feature projects: writer-director Manon Cousin’s Sam Tata dans les villes (Cent Trente 8 Films), which shows the major events of contemporary history through the work of photographer Sam Tata; and Lyne Lapointe – L’art et la matière (Argus Films), co-written and co-directed by Carmen Garcia and German Gutierrez, about the life and work of the artist Lyne Lapointe.

Radio-Canada’s Ici RDI is attached to La plaque tournante (Melki Films) by writer-director Viveka Melki. The doc centres on the human trafficking issue in Quebec. Melki Distribution is the distributor.

Corus Entertainment’s Historia is attached to Le pouvoir fantôme (Torq Le Groupe), written by Tristan Malavoy and co-directed by Guillaume Gauthier and Loïc Guyot. The doc follows the investigation of journalist Jean-Pierre Charbonneau into the links between the political world and the underworld in Quebec and the launch of an inquiry in 1972.

La Distributrice de Films is distributing writer-director Nicolas Dufour-Laperrière’s Les ombres lumineuses (Embuscade Films), which looks at moose hunting in Haute-Gatineau, and stories of Quebec hunters, the Anishinaabe people and the animals that inhabit the region.

Rounding out the selected feature docs are two films: Sisters of The Union (Art et essai) from writer-director Dan Popa, an autobiographical project about the filmmaker’s family life during communism in Romania, distributed by H264; and writer-director Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque’s Sisters, produced by Quebec-based Films du Rapide-Blanc (which is also distributing) and France’s Crescendo Media Films, which centres on a filmmaker working for the International Red Cross in Geneva who opens her home to three Ukrainian refugees.

Ici RDI is attached to two medium-length projects: Hudson’s Bay(bies) (Les film Sanajik) by directors Elisapie Isaac and Sophie Proulx-Lachance, and Une sur trois (Picbois Films), co-written and co-directed by Julie Boisvert and Élise Ekker-Lambert.

The other two medium-length docs are writer-director Léa Clermont-Dion’s La peur au ventre (Les Productions d’Octobre); and Vrais gars (A Média III), co-written and co-directed by Simon Coutu and Manuelle Légaré. Télé-Québec is the broadcaster for both projects.

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