Director/writer: Sarah Polley
Producers: Daniel Iron, Jennifer Weiss, Simone Urdl
Cast: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy
Distributor: Capri Releasing (Canada)

Sarah Polley’s ‘light-bulb moment’ for her first feature came in 2001, while reading an Alice Munro short story in the New Yorker on a plane back from Iceland, where she had been shooting Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing opposite Julie Christie.

‘As I read, I kept seeing Julie’s face in the character of Fiona,’ the Toronto-based Polley recalls. Munro’s story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, is about an Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife who is put in a nursing home by Grant (Gordon Pinsent), her philandering husband. She soon forgets him and falls in love with Aubrey (Michael Murphy), another patient, who is also married.

By the time Polley again crossed paths with Oscar-winner Christie – while costarring in Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words in 2005 – the Genie- and Gemini-winning actress, now 27, had already laid the groundwork for Away from Her. The drama gets its world premiere at a TIFF gala at Roy Thomson Hall on Sept. 11.

Feeling bullish about the project, The Harold Greenberg Fund helped Polley option the Munro short story early on.

‘What most interested us was [that] the story is very emotional, and one driven by character and the performances by the actors involved,’ says John Galway, HGF president. ‘And Sarah brings a certain quality as a first-time director, as she’s someone who would work well with actors.’

Polley’s screenwriting process for Away from Her was made only slightly easier by having the short story as source material.

‘Alice Munro’s writing is so dense. Each word is chosen so carefully – each dramatic action has such weight,’ Polley says.

Veteran Canuck thesp Pinsent recalls the young actress casually asking him in 2001 if he’d read Munro’s story.

Little did Pinsent, now 76, know then that Polley already had him pegged to play Grant, and that she would go on to impress him as a writer/director.

‘I knew her as a young actress, and stood back and watched her in quiet amazement,’ Pinsent says of Polley, who established herself as a child actor on the popular, long-running CBC series Road to Avonlea.

Unsurprisingly, the Genie- and Gemini-winning Pinsent is particularly complimentary about Polley’s dexterity in dealing with actors.

‘She’d show her satisfaction with your choice of interpretation, and then suddenly suggest another version, to get us through to an acceptable middle path,’ Pinsent recounts.

It was Polley’s writing ability that won over Olympia Dukakis, another Oscar-winning cast member, with whom Polley acted in Thom Fitzgerald’s The Event.

‘I was 10 pages into the script, liked it, and thought, ‘Who wrote this?’ So I looked at the front page and was startled to see Sarah had adapted this. That’s when it started for me,’ recalls Dukakis, who plays Aubrey’s wife Marian.

Rounding out the impressive cast is Kristen Thomson, Alberta Watson and Wendy Crewson.

Polley had previously helmed four short films, including the 2002 Genie-winning I Shout Love, before directing Away from Her this past spring in Toronto and small-town Ontario.

‘For me, acting is still scary. But I’ve been at it since I was four years old. Directing is so new and so thrilling and so consuming,’ she says of the month-long shoot.

Room to breathe

And being a low-budget $4-million Canadian picture, Polley got creative licence and breathing room from her producers.

‘They’re creatively involved in all the right ways,’ she says. ‘There’s 100% less stress than I’d find in Los Angeles, where I’d never survive making my first feature.’

Daniel Iron, who shares producing credit with Jennifer Weiss and Simone Urdl, sees the cast and plot as the drama’s pull.

‘It’s a beautiful story. The idea is to make people cry,’ he says.

Capri Releasing has the film’s Canadian rights, while London’s HanWay Films will be in Toronto to shop the worldwide rights and William Morris Independent will seek a U.S. buyer.

Holdups in post-production will prevent a release very soon after TIFF, says Robin Smith, operations manager for theatrical and video at Capri. The distrib has penciled in a February 2007 release.

‘That should give us enough time to spread the materials through the marketplace,’ Smith says, ‘with a strong chance that a U.S. distributor would be interested by then.’ *