GFT Entertainment is set to wrap production on The Limit, a $5.8-million thriller shooting in Hamilton, ON and starring screen legend Lauren Bacall along with Claire Forlani, Henry Czerny and Pete Postlethwaite.

The Canada/U.K. copro, handled on this side of the pond by GFT, casts the 78-year-old Bacall as a feisty senior who crosses paths with an undercover cop (Forlani) and a ruthless gangster (Postlethwaite).

Toronto-based AD-turned-helmer Lewin Webb (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Johnny Mnemonic) makes his feature directorial debut and also produces along with GFT’s Gary Howsam and Jamie Brown of Studio Eight Productions in London. GFT regular Curtis Peterson (Detention) is DOP and Nick Rotundo (The Fourth Angel) will edit after the Oct. 30 wrap.

Alliance Atlantis will distribute across Canada and sales have also been secured in Germany and Italy through Toronto’s Cinemavault Releasing.

The film did not apply to any of the funding agencies. ‘We don’t do it that way,’ says Webb. ‘We’re able to finance it…and that allows the public coffers to remain for filmmakers who have less commercially-driven productions.’ The Limit is bankrolled by the prodcos, its international sales, and a sale-leaseback agreement.

The Limit is the latest in a series of films – Crime Spree, Absolon, Partners in Action, Detention – recently shot by GFT, and will likely be followed in 2003 by another three projects currently in development.

Detention director Sidney Furie is set to shoot the action pic Direct Action in Ontario next year, while Crime Spree’s Brad Mirman will helm the Canada/U.K. copro Shadow Dancer in England. Helga, a Mel Brooks-esque hockey comedy with Matt Frewer (Jailbait), is also slated to shoot here in the spring or autumn.

Avast, ye scurvy documentarians

Anyone who ever wondered where ocean liners go to die should watch for Shipbreakers from Storyline Entertainment. The one-hour documentary, coproduced with the National Film Board for CBC’s The Nature of Things, looks at the scrap yards of Alang, India, where aging ships are run aground and taken apart, at great risk, by thousands of poverty-stricken locals. It’s nasty work and producers Ed Barreveld and Michael Kot will send director Daniel Sekulich (Aftermath: The Remnants of War) to get it all on film during a 65-day, two-crew shoot this winter, following location scouting in November. Mike Grippo is in talks to be DOP and Deborah Palloway will edit over the summer.

‘We’re trying to be balanced about this,’ says Barreveld of the dangerous and toxic work site. ‘It’s very easy as first-world citizens to point the finger, but the fact of the matter is, we’re shipping our garbage down there.’ So far, the $800,000 project is backed by the CTF and NFB. Barreveld hopes to round out the budget with cash from the Rogers Documentary Fund and one or two international or U.S. broadcasters.

Keeping with the nautical theme, the Toronto prodco also plans to shoot Pirates sometime next year – going deep inside the world of the modern-day brigands who prowl the South China Sea. ‘It’s going to be a very difficult film to finance,’ Barreveld admits, putting the budget at $1 million. ‘It’s really not a Canadian subject…and it’s going to be expensive because we have to hang out with those guys.’

He and Kot are currently shopping the idea to Canadian, U.S. and European broadcasters, and are in talks with director Tim Wolochatiuk (Counterforce). This will mark the second collaboration between Storyline and journalist Donovan Webster, who penned the source material for their much-praised Aftermath: The Remnants of War and has written extensively about pirates and Asian crime rings. Barreveld hopes to begin work on Pirates as soon as Shipbreakers wraps.

The company is also developing Reluctant Soldier, a 70-minute retelling of Alexander von Svoboda’s adventures in WWII. The Austrian nobleman, now 72 and living in Canada, flew experimental glider bombers for the Germans, was twice captured by Russians, and later worked for the Americans as an interpreter for General Patton.

Barreveld hopes the $800,000 production will draw funds from Rogers, the CTF, NFB and History Television.

Anything to declare?

White Pine Pictures is looking to spin its three-part documentary The Undefended Border into a dramatic series, and has hired scribe Jeremy Hole (External Affairs) to pen a two-hour pilot for CBC. Partners Peter Raymont and Lindalee Tracey produce, and will seek out a director between now and the planned shoot next spring and summer. Applications will go in for the March round of Telefilm Canada and CTF funding.

Raymont thinks a series about border and immigration cops will sell well internationally. ‘Every country in the world has immigration problems,’ he says, ‘there’s 300 million people on the move, sneaking across borders.’

White Pine first pitched the idea to CBC’s Susan Morgan, creative head of series programming, more than a year ago, and got the nod back in the spring. The documentary played well earlier this month on TVOntario (123,000 viewers), Access Alberta and Knowledge Network.

Just the FACTs

Short films have a regular home on Bravo! – now that the CHUM-owned specialty channel has rolled its Bravo!FACT interstitials into a new half-hour weekly program.

Bravo!FACT, the show, debuted Oct. 21 at 6 p.m. with The Interview, a new film by Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo), among its selected shorts. It’s adapted from the poem by Anne Carson and stars fashion designer Crystal Seimans and Bravo! boss Moses Znaimer. ‘He really thought he was going to do something low budget,’ says B!F executive director Judy Gladstone of McDonald, ‘but he couldn’t help himself, so he ended up shooting it on 35mm and casting big names.’ The Interview runs 3.5 minutes and cost roughly $16,500.

The show will be programmed with shorts as they come through the Bravo!FACT (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent) program, which, since its inception in 1994, has paid out more than $6 million in grants to short film productions.