Louis Bélanger and Bruce McDonald were among the 11 filmmakers who drew cheques from Telefilm Canada late last month through the low-budget end of its Canada Feature Film Fund.

McDonald’s The Tracy Fragments, about a young girl on the brink of insanity, and the crime drama Le Génie du crime, from Gaz Bar Blues’ Bélanger, both scored funding through the Low Budget Independent Feature Film Assistance Program. The program backs production, post and completion of director-driven projects.

Frances-Anne Soloman (Lord Have Mercy!) also got the nod for her lighthearted Urban Life Skillz, as did Ann Marie Fleming (The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam) for The French Guy, about a young woman with a split personality.

Other winners: New Brunswick’s Doug Sutherland for his Hooterville Vice, Joshua Dorsey’s mystery The Point, The Cabin Movie by Dylan Akio Smith and The Hamster Cage, a family drama from Larry Kent in Vancouver, now in post.

French-language projects backed by the LIFAP include Marc Bisaillon’s kidnapping yarn La Lâcheté, Brian Wright’s Towing and Pour adultes seulement – a crime story, as with Génie du crime adapted from a George Walker play – to be directed by Micheline Lanctôt.

‘By investing in both emerging talent and established directors – from all regions of the country – Telefilm is helping to foster a diversity of voices that promise to connect with filmgoers,’ says Telefilm chief Wayne Clarkson.

The agency’s regional offices have also backed two movies that requested less than $1 million: Black Eyed Dog for Pierre Gang in New Brunswick and Love and Other Dilemmas for Loreto Di Stefano in B.C.

-www.telefilm.gc.ca