Last month’s Atlantic Film Festival went well for both deal-makers and everyday movie fans, according to organizer Gregor Ash, who says ‘everything seemed to fall in place’ for the 10-day event in Halifax.

‘We don’t have final numbers yet, but in terms of attendance, buzz, filmmakers on the ground, Strategic Partners – everything was firing on all pistons,’ he says.

The fest wrapped on Sept. 23, with Camelia Frieberg winning the best Atlantic feature award for her directorial debut A Stone’s Throw, while Philippe Falardeau’s Congorama took the juried prize for best Canadian feature.

‘This will help us get a buzz going in the rest of Canada,’ says Falardeau, who will follow up with a screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Other winners included Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes, which took best Canadian documentary, and Toronto-based Megan Martin’s Ninth Street Chronicles for best Canadian short.

The fest’s industry conference, Strategic Partners, enjoyed an approximate 30% boost in attendance to a record 188 delegates, and was also ‘a big highlight,’ says Ash. ‘It really cleared way over the bar that we’d set according to people we’ve spoken to – as far as the number of meetings, level of meetings, and buzz going around.’

‘When you meet colleagues at Strategic Partners, you know they are people that you can do executive business with, and not emerging producers you need to bring along,’ adds SP organizer Jan Miller, speaking after the Sept. 15-17 conference.

This year’s event included invited industry executives from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to the usual Canadian, American and British contingents.

That gave Robin Cass, a partner at Toronto-based Triptych Media, key financing and partnership leads for a $10-million biopic he’s developing about the late Nigerian activist Ken Sara-Wiwa.

‘There is clearly a huge amount of interest,’ says Cass, following meetings with reps from South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry and its National Film & Video Foundation.

AFF opened its 26th edition with The Journals of Knud Rasmussen before giving play to other homegrown movies.

The team behind David Gonella’s A Bug and a Bag of Weed, a local comedy about three computer store salesmen who inherit a hockey bag full of marijuana from a wild high school friend, completed an ambitious media blitz in Halifax ahead of a theatrical release by Domino Films and TV slots with Showcase and the Independent Film Channel.

The first public screening played mostly to local Halifax students, helping to build buzz.

Chris Cuthbertson, a producer with Halifax-based After Dark Productions, says Nova Scotia is a ‘perfect petrie dish’ for independent filmmakers, given a local presence for funding agencies and a unique Atlantic Canadian sensibility.

Fellow Nova Scotia filmmaker William MacGillivray saw Life Classes, a feature film he premiered at the AFF 20 years ago, receive another screening in Halifax after being digitally restored ahead of an upcoming DVD release.

‘There’s quiet satisfaction in seeing my film have its place in our culture,’ says MacGillivray.

The festival’s closing night film, Danish director Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, was, however, overshadowed by both a Rolling Stones concert that drew around 50,000 fans to downtown Halifax and an NHL pre-season game.

‘Some people didn’t come to our closing party, but we still had close to a thousand people there, so we’re happy,’ says Ash.

-With files from Marcus Robinson