The Montreal World Film Festival/Festival des Films du Monde will be held Aug. 27 to Sept. 7. The submission deadline for feature films is July 25.

Operating parallel to WFF are the 34th Student Film & Video Festival, presented by Kodak Canada (division cinema et television), and the Montreal International Film Market, Aug. 30 to Sept. 5. The market will be located in the Wyndham Hotel in Complex Desjardins.

WFF’s new dates have been the source of some controversy since they partly overlap with the Toronto International Film Festival, Sept. 4-13, and are essentially the same as the Venice Film Festival.

Meanwhile, in a prepared statement, WFF says it has terminated its accreditation with the International Federation of Film Producers Associations, ‘since it had become evident over recent years that this so-called ‘accreditation’ was of no use.’

Martin Malina is the festival’s new director of communications.

-www.ffm-montreal.org

AFF selects Script finalists

The 23rd Atlantic Film Festival has selected the participants for the eighth edition of its Script Development Project, which will take place over three weekends this summer, culminating at the AFF’s Scripts Out Loud and the Harold Greenberg Fund Script Pitch events.

The contestants, selected from 42 applicants, are East-Coasters John Hillis, Greg Jackson, Richard LeBlanc, Eva Madden and Krista Peach. The workshops will be led by the Canadian Film Centre’s senior story editor-in-residence Allan Magee. The scribes will also work alongside Lowenbe Holdings president Jan Miller before pitching their scripts to a panel of industry professionals at the script pitch.

The AFF takes place Sept. 12-20.

-www.atlanticfilm.com

FanTasia returns

FanTasia2003 is set to unspool July 17 to Aug. 10 in Montreal with a program lineup that includes over 90 features and more than 40 short films.

Highlights of this year’s edition (last year’s festival was cancelled) include four films from Japanese enfant terrible Takashi Miike, several of Japan’s latest Godzilla features, a mini-tribute to France’s new wave of fantastic cinema, the world premiere of Jeepers Creepers 2, the experimental anime production Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space and a spotlight on eclectic South African documentarian Richard Stanley (The White Darkness, The Secret Glory).

Screenings will be held at the downtown 720-seat, giant-screen Concordia Hall Cinema, which fest organizers say is being fully upgraded to Dolby Digital with 19 additional high-end speakers, and at the 173-seat Cinema De Seve.

-www.fantasiafestival.com

Deadlines

The 2nd World of Comedy International Film Festival has put out a call for entries in the feature film and five short film categories. These categories include mockumentary, narrative, experimental, animation and documentary. The short doc submissions must be about comedy or by a comedian involved in filmmaking.

The early-bird deadline for submissions is Sept. 30, with a drop-dead deadline of Oct. 31.

The festival takes place in Toronto Feb. 11-15, 2004.

-www.worldcomedyfilmfest.com

* Sudbury, ON’s Music and Film in Motion festival has put out a call for entries and issued general guidelines for its Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards, to be held on Sept. 15.

The fest is currently fielding submissions for films with respect to its best film, director, film editing, cinematography and screenplay awards. To qualify, the filmmaker(s) must have been born in northern Ontario or resided there for eight consecutive months anywhere between January 2001 and August 2003. Deadline for submissions is Aug. 1.

-www.musicandfilminmotion.com