SODEC selects 10 documentaries for funding

Filming
The latest round of the production assistance program allocated funding to feature and medium-length docs.

La Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles (SODEC) has selected 10 documentaries for funding under its production assistance program.

The projects include feature and medium-length docs. The program received a total of 28 submissions requesting funding in this latest round, according to a release.

The 10 projects include A Lifetime in Photobooths, written by Meags Fitzgerald and directed by Fitzgerald and Sarah Mackenzie. The documentary follows visual artist, performer and photo booth expert Fitzgerald as she explores the world of collectors and photo booth enthusiasts, while showing the love story that binds her to these machines.

The film is a copro between Quebec’s Œil Métal Film and Nova Scotia’s Gorgeous Mistake Productions. EyeSteelFilm is the distributor and Crave has boarded the project as broadcaster.

Other projects include the Immina Films-distributed Cut Print Thank You Bye (Item 7) from filmmaker Marie-Julie Dallaire, an intimate portrait of the late Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée, with Radio-Canada as the broadcaster; and writer-director Jessica Valoise’s Kubana (XSKY), which means “living together” and tells the story of four generations of Rwandans. Natyf TV is the broadcaster.

In filmmaker Carlos Ferrand’s Aventurine, the focus is on the iconic Percé Rock and the Gaspé Peninsula. The project has franC doc films attached as both the prodco and distributor

Maison 4:3 is the distributor of writer-director Sophie Deraspe‘s The Last Act (ACPAV Development and Production Corporation), which explores medical assistance in dying using testimonies of doctors and their patients, and A Caribou in the Light (Terre Innue Productions), written and directed by Isabelle Longnus and co-written by Florent Vollant. The film is about Vollant, an iconic musician of the Innu nation who begins a new chapter in his life following a stroke. Radio-Canada is the broadcaster on A Caribou in the Light.

Les Films du 3 Mars distributes two films: writer-director Jean-François Lesage’s Law Leads to Everything (Les Productions des Films de l’Autre) and Let Silence Not Prevail (Les Films Camera Oscura), written by Catherine Hébert, who co-directs with Elric Robichon.

Law Leads to Everything asks students and professors of the Faculty of Law of the University of Montreal if debate is still possible, while Let Silence Not Prevail examines three writers who are at different times intimidated, pursued, arrested, tortured and forced into exile.

SODEC is also supporting Tough Old Broads (H2LScrap) from filmmaker Stacey Tenenbaum, which tells the stories of female trailblazers Katherine Switzer, Siila Watt-Cloutier and Sharon Farmer. Noblearts is distributing with Yes TV onboard as broadcaster.

Rounding out the selections is writer-director Félix Lamarche’s doc feature Uranium City (Les Productions des Films de l’Autre), which follows the remaining fifty odd residents of the town in northern Saskatchewan 40 years after its uranium mines closed. The Film Distributor is releasing the film.

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