While English Canada scratches its head wondering how it can inject some life into its sagging film industry, the folks at culture-funder Société de développement des entreprises culturelles are raising a glass to their first 10 years.

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Playback’s Hot Sheet knows, the box-office story for Canadian films in recent years has been the utter dominance of releases from Quebec. Despite accounting for 23% of the Canadian population, it is not uncommon for la belle province to place four or five films in the weekly top five. In each of the past two years, eight of the top 10 Canuck performers have been Quebec titles, and this year promises to be no different, with three releases so far having passed $5 million at the domestic till.

One thing those three films have in common is that they all received substantial financial backing from SODEC: C.R.A.Z.Y. was granted $925,000; Aurore got $1.2 million; and $900,000 was bestowed upon Horloge biologique.

In the time since the Quebec government launched SODEC, replacing previous film and TV subsidizer SOGIC, there has been a veritable nouvelle vague québécoise unspooling at the province’s cinemas. The recurring involvement of SODEC is no coincidence. Each of the province’s all-time top 10 box-office films has been released in the SODEC era; eight have received investment from the funder. Interestingly, the two that didn’t are popular comedies: Les Boys and Elvis Gratton 2 – Miracle à Memphis, which suggests a preference at the agency for auteur or ‘serious’ films.

But SODEC has proven adept at adapting. Noting these successes, it has, in the past five or so years, thrown its support behind an increasing number of mainstream productions. Its mandate is spelled out right on its website: ‘While sensitive to the needs of the creative community, [SODEC] also shares the financier’s concern for sound management and a healthy profit.’ And so it gave nearly $1 million to laugher La Grande séduction, which has turned out to be the second-most successful Quebec production on domestic screens, and it came on board for Les Boys II and Les Boys III, sequels that blow away the law of diminishing returns.

And SODEC does not merely cut cheques. It supports productions throughout development, shooting and distribution. In the case of C.R.A.Z.Y., now vying for an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film – a trophy the SODEC-backed Les Invasions barbares brought home a couple of years ago – the agency is helping to pay for screeners for Academy voters, an Oscar-focused ad campaign, and transportation for the filmmakers and cast to and from L.A.

But long before filmmakers start thinking awards, they listen to what SODEC readers have to say, and not only because their funding rides on it. As director Érik Canuel (Le Survenant, Bon Cop, Bad Cop) explains, ‘Sometimes, the readers see things that we don’t see anymore because we’re so close to the project… Maybe they’re right on some points and we see if we can learn from their vision of the project… Most of the feature scripts have been improved by SODEC.’

Which is not to say that SODEC has not, on occasion, misjudged the tastes of Quebec audiences. It is worth noting that the agency was initially unreceptive to the C.R.A.Z.Y. project. Despite the fact that Telefilm Canada had given the project the green light, SODEC, keeping the mainstream viewer in mind, felt audiences would not be able to follow the film’s many family characters as the script shifts time frames. It was only a fresh injection of funding into the agency’s coffers from the Quebec government that enabled the film to get provincial cash.

It brings to mind what screenwriter William Goldman said about the film business: ‘Nobody knows anything.’ But SODEC just seems to be a little less ignorant than most.

Still, there are sectors of the industry that want a bigger piece of the SODEC pie. Exhibitors, for one, would like more support, especially with the high cost of the digital cinema changeover looming. And the agency has a great challenge ahead in coping with the rapid growth of Quebec cinema that it has been so instrumental in driving. The number of feature film applications that SODEC must consider has nearly doubled in the past two years, and some producers openly fret about the funder not giving winning applications the full amounts they need because it is looking to accommodate more productions.

If only the rest of the country had to deal with these problems of success.

‘Now we have to analyze what makes English Canada tick,’ Minister of Heritage Liza Frulla tells Playback. It was Frulla, by the way, who tabled the concept for SODEC when she was Quebec’s minister of culture and communications. ‘Look at Corner Gas, Degrassi, Da Vinci,’ she adds. ‘There’s something in there that appeals to a lot of Canadians. It’s only [a matter of] how do you transfer this to have a universal success?’

But generally, English-Canadian production centers have moved in the opposite direction of Quebec. B.C. decided last year not to renew B.C. Film’s Feature Film Fund, while the Ontario Media Development Corporation (formerly the OFDC) had previously exited feature film investment. The OMDC recently announced $1.5 million for feature development and production support, but this pales in comparison to SODEC’s budget of $26 million.

Other provinces need to look long and hard at what Quebec has accomplished in such a short period of time, and must also become serious investors in domestic film production.