‘I’ve never heard a gunshot like that.’

That was the reaction of producer Don Carmody upon watching the opening scene of Polytechnique, which begins simply with an image of a photocopy machine, then a haunting gunshot.

Carmody is familiar with on-screen violence, having worked on copious horror films (Resident Evil, Skinwalkers) and shoot ’em ups (Assault on Precinct 13), but something hit home when he watched director Denis Villeneuve’s final cut of the controversial film for the first time.

‘I realized how incredibly powerful it was. [That gunshot] just galvanized the movie and the story from that point on,’ says the veteran filmmaker, who remarkably is up for his first best picture Genie, although he’s collected numerous Golden Reel awards. (He was also coproducer of the Oscar-winning Chicago.)

The artful retelling of the 1989 massacre at a Montreal college, coproduced with Quebec’s Maxime Rémillard, is the frontrunner at this year’s Genies with 11 nominations, closely followed by drama Nurse.Fighter.Boy with 10 nods, and Inuit survival story Before Tomorrow with nine nominations.

Polytechnique is also nominated for best direction, original screenplay for Jacques Davidts, cinematography for perennial favorite Pierre Gill – who garnered his seventh Genie nomination – lead actress for Karine Vanasse and supporting actor for Maxim Gaudette, who portrays ‘the killer.’

Though Polytechnique is ‘not your usual Don Carmody production,’ the producer says the project resonated with him when he was approached by Rémillard because he has twin daughters who are in university and taking courses that could be identified as male-centric.

‘That certainly struck me. But the other thing is that [school shootings] just keep happening, year after year, and not just in America or Canada,’ he observes. ‘I felt that becoming involved in the project would help remind us how long this has been happening and that it’s still happening,’ adds Carmody, who recently wrapped the fourth installment of Resident Evil (see story, p. 17), and is currently shooting the psychological thriller Hidden in Montreal.