Sarin takes Partition to India

Vancouver – When the first half of production on Partition, a new feature by director/DOP Vic Sarin (Margaret’s Museum), wraps in Vancouver July 21, the producers are taking the show east. Way east. We’re talking India, where this romantic drama is set.

Written by Sarin and Patricia Finn, Partition is about a 38-year-old Sikh man, played by Jimi Mistry (Touch of Pink), who falls in love with a 17-year-old Muslim girl (Kristin Kreuk of Smallville) separated from her family amidst the political and religious upheaval that tore apart India and Pakistan in the late 1940s.

Despite the film’s sensitive subject matter, the producers have received ‘tremendous support from both the Muslim and Sikh communities [in India],’ says producer Tina Pehme of Vancouver’s Sepia Films.

‘[The script] doesn’t point fingers at anyone. It shows there are strengths and weaknesses in both societies, and if we’re going to survive we have to come together,’ says Pehme. ‘Our goal is to make a Canadian film that has relevance in Canada and in the international marketplace.’

The cast is rounded out by Neve Campbell (The Company) and Thomas Kretschmann (King Kong).

Partition is shooting under the Sepia banner, with Pehme (Deluxe Combo Platter), Sarin and Kim Roberts (It’s All Gone Pete Tong) producing. Christopher Zimmer (Love and Death on Long Island) of Halifax’s imX communications is exec producer.

Budget details are not being disclosed at this time. Funding has come from Telefilm Canada, Astral Media and The Harold Greenberg Fund, with presales to The Movie Network, Movie Central and CHUM. Seville Pictures will distribute in Canada, with Myriad Pictures handling foreign sales.

Partition is scheduled to move to India in September and will wrap in October. It should be ready for screens come April, says Pehme. Dustin Dinoff

Bessai’s Unnatural departure

Vancouver – Director Carl Bessai, known for his quieter, character-driven features Emile and Lola, is busting out of his pigeonhole with a new film that disturbs even him. Unnatural & Accidental wrapped a three-week shoot last month in Vancouver, and while Bessai hopes audiences will be compelled by the movie, he also expects them to be somewhat sickened by its violent subject matter.

Marie Clements wrote the script, adapting it from her play The Unnatural and Accidental Women. It’s about a woman searching for her aboriginal mother, who is instead led to her mother’s killer by the spirits of other women he has murdered in Vancouver’s skid row area.

Bessai says the tragic and nonlinear script was a welcome challenge.

‘I’ve tried to take a very gritty subject and make it kind of beautiful,’ he says. ‘It’s a really violent, unrelenting movie. Some scenes were hard to watch being filmed, but this is a strong moral film that has a lot to say about the urban native experience and the general lack of interest in their lives.’

Bessai produces with Jason James (Rugged Rich and the Ona Ona). The film stars Carmen Moore (Godiva’s), Tantoo Cardinal (H2O) and Callum Keith Rennie (Whiskey Echo), who, Bessai says, is ‘awesome’ as the killer.

Budgeted at $900,000, Unnatural & Accidental is funded by Telefilm Canada, The Harold Greenberg Fund, CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund and British Columbia Film, with Odeon Films on board as the Canadian distributor. Bessai says he hopes at least a rough cut will be ready for festival consideration this fall. Dustin Dinoff

Parker is a Summer Babe

Winnipeg – Summer Babe, a new film from writer/director Matt Bissonnette starring Molly Parker (Deadwood), is currently shooting in Manitoba cottage country, and it sure isn’t a bad way to spend July, says Toronto-based producer Corey Marr. The Manitoba/Ontario coproduction began filming July 11 and will continue at locations including Winnipeg Beach and Falcon Beach, even making a stop near Kenora, ON.

The film is a dramatic comedy about two highly competitive childhood friends vying for the attention of one woman. Parker – who just wrapped on the Ben Affleck starrer Truth, Justice and the American Way in Toronto – is featured as the object of their affections. She is also Bissonnette’s real-life wife. The couple worked together on 2002’s Looking for Leonard, which Bissonnette directed with Steven Clark. Summer Babe also stars Lukas Haas (Brick), Adam Scott (The Aviator), Wendy Crewson and R.H. Thomson.

Marr says the film is budgeted at about $1.5 million, with funding from Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film & Sound and presales to The Movie Network, Movie Central and Showcase. Christal Films will handle domestic distribution. International distrib options will be explored upon completion.

Marr is producing through his Corey Marr Productions with Brendon Sawatzky (Inertia) of Winnipeg’s Inferno Pictures. Arthur Cooper (Heater) is the DOP.

Production runs until early August and post will take place in Toronto. Marr says the plan is to deliver in January. Dustin Dinoff