MONTREAL: The opening-night film at this year’s World Film Festival (Aug. 27 to Sept. 7) is director Louis Belanger’s Gaz Bar Blues. The film is also entered in the official World Cinema competition.

Belanger is one of Quebec’s most promising young filmmakers. His biographical doc on the late director Jean-Claude Lauzon, Lauzon-Lauzone (2001), co-directed with Isabelle Hebert, won wide critical acclaim, and his 1999 feature drama debut Post Mortem won the WFF prize for best screenplay and turned in a solid performance at the Quebec box office.

‘I am very pleased that the festival’s opening-night film is a work of our promising new generation of cineastes,’ says WFF president Serge Losique. ‘This year Quebec cinema has been especially prominent on the international scene and all evidence points to increasing future success.’

Belanger and his film have also won praise from several high-profile industry personalities, including director Denys Arcand.

Gaz Bar Blues stars Serge Theriault (Les Boys) as a small-town gas station owner who must contend with all manner of personal and community problems, from holdups to the onset of Parkinson’s disease, strained family relations and competition from the self-service shop across the street. Gilles Renaud, Danny Gilmore, Maxime Dumontier, Sebastien Delorme and Fanny Mallette costar. The film was produced by Lorraine Dufour of Coop Video de Montreal and will be released in theatres Sept. 5 by Film Tonic and Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

Many firsts in Panorama Canada

Many selections in this year’s WFF Panorama Canada sidebar are features from first-time directors, including Drummer Boy from Hamilton, ON psychiatrist-turned-writer David Dawson. The film tells the story of 18-year-old Philip (Dominic Zamprogna), who decides he needs a break from school and the rest of his life. Cast also includes Timm Zemanek, Kaime Sherman and Kathleen Munroe.

In Pete McCormack’s See Grace Fly, a digital first feature from Vancouver, a courageous missionary returns home from war-ravaged Sierra Leone to attend his mother’s funeral and find his lost schizophrenic sister. Cast includes Gina Chiarelli, Paul McGillion, Benjamin Ratner and Jennifer Copping. McCormack is the screenwriter of Lea Pool’s Blue Butterfly and U.S. director Jim Wilson’s Whirlygirl.

University of Toronto film grad Paula Tiberius’ feature debut is Goldirocks, a high-energy comedic story of an oversexed female rock and roller and her ‘up-and-down’ experience in the music industry. Players include Sasha Ormond, Greg Legros and Laura Kim.

Damon Vignale’s Little Brother of War, from B.C., is a tale of a small boy’s cross-country journey and his friendship with a jaded cop. Players include Frank Cassini, Brett Sherwood, Nancy Sivak, Kurt Max Runte and Byron Chief Moon. Also from B.C. is Lili Schad’s first feature Betraying Reason, an intimate story of a man and woman drawn together by fate as they attempt to transcend their violent pasts. Cast includes John Pyper Ferguson and Leila Johnson.

Episodic TV director William Gereghty (Smallville) makes his feature debut with The Wild Guys, about three middle-aged male friends who spend an eventful weekend in the woods. The film is based on the play by Andrew Wregitt and Rebecca Shaw. Ken Welsh, Hrothgar Mathews and Jackson Davies star.

Chris Philpott’s Fairytales & Pornography, a production of the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project ultra-low-budget initiative, is the story of an idealistic legal aid lawyer who falls in love with a troubled, mysterious client. Players include Kelly Harms, Lindy Booth, Michael Ironside and Eric Peterson.

Local director and actor Michael Daley’s Frail is set among the smokestacks and church steeples of east-end Montreal and follows a day in the life of various neighborhood characters. Cast includes Guy Nadon, Naila Belvett, Cherie Moody and Jeff Fisher.

Meanwhile, veteran Peter Wellington’s latest film, the Toronto production Luck, is set against the historic 1972 Canada-USSR hockey series, focusing on one man’s obsession with luck, or rather the lack of it. The film stars Luke Kirby, Sarah Polley and Jed Rees. Wellington’s Joe’s So Mean to Josephine won the Claude Jutra Award for best first feature at the 1996 Genie Awards.

-www.ffm-montreal.org