Montreal: Forty-one days of filming wrapped Aug. 18 on The Last Sign, a psychological drama with a touch of the supernatural produced by Claude Leger of Transfilm in partnership with the U.K.’s Spice Factory and France’s Groupe Carrere.

The Last Sign stars Andie MacDowell, Tim Roth and Samuel Le Bihan. Bihan played the lead in the hit TVA Films historical action-fantasy Brotherhood of the Wolf and appears in Dominique Deruddere’s Pour le plaisir and Mary McGuckian’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Paris-based director Douglas Law has directed two dramatic shorts, Insomnie and A tout de suite. The Last Sign is his first feature.

MacDowell plays a woman who struggles to heal herself after the death of her violent, alcoholic husband. Crushed by resentment, she relives old nightmarish events until the very tyrant who gave her so much grief provides her with the key to renewed love.

Craft credits go to line producer Ginette Guillard, DOP Jean-Claude Larrieu and art director Jean-Francois Campeau.

The Last Sign is budgeted at $18.8 million (split 50% Canada, 30% France and 20% U.K.). Arclight of Sydney, Australia is the international sales agent. Gap financing is by Pierre Leblanc of FIDEC. The film will be distributed in Canada by Remstar Distribution/Alliance Atlantis.

Transfilm’s Leger is one of Canada’s leading coproducers. His credits include the feature films Shadow of the Wolf (aka Agaguk), Highlander III and Grey Owl and the miniseries Napoleon, Robinson Crusoe, Gavin Millar’s La Belle Epoque and Yves Boisset’s The Lovers of Red River.

Upcoming action at Transfilm includes Notre-Dame de Paris, Musketeers, Yokohama, M (La Marque jaune) and Animal.

Ada, an anthropological adventure film set in southern Africa one million years ago, is slated to go into preproduction later this fall for an early ’04 start on location in Africa and in studio in Montreal. The project, under director Pierre Magny (Shadow of the Wolf), is a coproduction with France’s GMT Productions (La Garder/Hachette) and Spice Factory. It is budgeted in the $22-million range and was initially developed under the working title Fossil Child.

The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds

Films Piche Ferrari and director/writer Pepita Ferrari are in post on The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds. The one-hour History Television doc tells the true story of a mid-19th century Canadian girl who disguises herself as a man, runs away from home as a teen to avoid marrying a totally repugnant man and re-emerges as one Franklin Thompson, a traveling bible salesman, and later as a private in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Ferrari says Emma’s story has been treated only sparingly and inaccurately on film. The many written accounts include a lengthy newspaper interview with Emma and her book, Unsexed – The Female Soldier.

Edmonds is the only woman to ever receive the honor of being mustered into the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1990, she was one of the first women named to the New Brunswick Women’s Hall of Fame.

Ferrari shot the dramatic sequences of Emma’s early years and her two years as a Civil War nurse, courier and spy over 12 days earlier this summer using historical re-enactors on location in Virginia and at Kings Landing, NB.

‘The flashback [montage] blends the past with the present and gives the production a more evocative, emotional style,’ says the director.

The doc also includes informal interviews with family, Civil War re-enactors and historians, as well as archival materials from the University of Michigan Historical Archives and the Military Archives in Washington, DC, among other sources. Emma’s own writings and interviews thread the film’s narrative.

Production credits go to Gemeaux-winning cinematographer Marc Gadoury (The Cola Conquest, Bonjour! Shalom!). The original music score is from Quebec singer/composer Karen Young (Road from Kampuchea, Revoir Julie) and Barbara Brown is picture editor. Ferrari and partner Louis Piche are the film’s producers.

Funding on The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds, budgeted at $300,000, comes from History, Telefilm Canada, Quebec cultural funding agency SODEC and the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund.

Ferrari’s filmography includes the award-winning historical docs By Woman’s Hand and The Petticoat Expeditions. She also directed and produced Joseph Giunta: A Silent Triumph, the ’02 Golden Sheaf (Yorkton) winner for best direction – documentary and arts and entertainment.

Teen talent shines in 15/Love

Production is underway for 96 days through to Nov. 24 on the Canada/France tween drama copro 15/Love. Montreal’s Galafilm, Toronto’s Telefactory and France’s Marathon S.A. are producing the 26 half-hour series, slated for broadcast in ’04 on YTV (the primary funder in the show’s development phase), Radio-Canada and France 2. Filming is taking place in St. Cesaire, QC.

‘This is high-end drama [budget: $11.6 million], shot on Super 16mm film, and France 2 has not been able to afford to do local French-brand productions at this level,’ says Galafilm president Arnie Gelbart. ‘[France 2] is happy to get involved in coproduction and get this made because they’ll eventually end up buying it anyway. They buy all the Dawson’s Creeks and Degrassi Highs. Here they end up being in on the ground floor.’

On the decision to use film, Gelbart says, ‘Even the most film-look video doesn’t work for them [France 2]. They also feel that it sells better in the international market if it is originated on film.’

In the spirit of Blue Crush and Bend It Like Beckham, 15/Love is a coming-of-age story set in the super high-pressure world of international junior tennis competition.

Derek Schreyer (I Was a Sixth Grade Alien, Drop the Beat) and former CTV senior drama exec Karen Troubetzkoy (The Magician’s House) created the series and are the showrunners.

‘It’s not all skirts and sunshine,’ says Schreyer. ‘We’re having fun pushing the boundaries of what might seem like a sunny premise by exposing the underbelly of professional sport while also celebrating its nobility.’

15/Love players include Max Walker as a laidback West Coaster harboring a dark secret, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse in the role of a tennis prodigy who still plays with her dollies by night and Laurence Leboeuf as a latte-swilling city-slacker and anti-jock type.

Rounding out the cast are Meaghan Rath, Jaclyn Linetsky, Vadim Schneider in the role of a talented French boy desperate to hide his working-class roots and Sacha Cantor as bad-boy Justin.

French director Paolo Barzman (Largo Winch, Relic Hunter) is lead director. Toronto-based Craig Pryce (The Zach Files, I Was a Sixth Grade Alien) and Graeme Lynch (The Magician’s House, Beverly Hills 90210) are also slated to direct. A fourth director position is envisioned.

Renaud Mathieu is the line producer. Valerie Le Gurun is the DOP and Andre Chamberland is the production designer. Crew is by the STCVQ.

Jesse Fawcett of Telefactory, Olivier Bremond of Marathon and Gelbart are the exec producers. Pascal Breton and Gelbart are producing.

15/Love is produced with the financial participation of YTV, France 2, Telefilm Canada, the Licence Fee Program, the Quebec, Ontario and federal tax credit programs, SRC, the Shaw Television Broadcast Fund and Marathon International S.A., the international distributor.

Galafilm and partners recently wrapped production on the Canada/U.K. fantasy miniseries Fungus the Bogeyman, licensed by CBC and BBC.

Production starts Sept. 8 on location in Montreal on the third season of Bliss, eight new half-hours of the women’s erotic anthology series commissioned by Showcase Television, The Movie Network, Movie Central and Super Ecran in Canada and Oxygen in the U.S. Bliss is a coproduction between Galafilm and Toronto’s Back Alley Films.