Montreal: The 26th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival is certainly living up to its name, with 406 films from 75 countries, including 248 world premieres, 214 feature films, 33 medium-length films and 159 short films on the program.

The fall film season opens here with the festival, which favors European art-house films, Montreal’s specialty, and under-distributed international films, with important sidebar programs dedicated to Latin America cinema as well as films from Africa and Japan.

The overall number of Canadian films at WFF2002, which runs Aug. 22 to Sept. 2, is an impressive 153 and includes 25 feature films, many of which are premieres.

Two Canadian feature films, Manon Briand’s La Turbulence des fluides (produced by Max Films and distributed by Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm) and Brad Fraser’s Leaving Metropolis (Original Pictures/Film Tonic), are among the 26 highly diverse entries competing for this year’s Grand Prix des Ameriques, top prize in the competitive long-form section.

Seventeen short films, including four animated shorts from the National Film Board, are entered in the WFF short-film competition.

Among the internationally recognized names expected to visit the festival are legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard, who is slated to give two lectures/press conferences; French director/producer Luc Besson, who’ll receive this year’s Special Grand Prix achievement award and is the coproducer on Turbulence; and actor/producer Gerard Depardieu (Napoleon) along with his actor son Guillaume, both of whom recently visited Montreal and Toronto while working on new shoots.

Other personalities expected to share in the glitter include Quebec actor and Turbulence lead Pascale Bussieres, award-winning French actor-turned-director Vincent Perez (Cyrano, La Reine Margot), director Michel Blanc, actor Charlotte Rampling, and a major American star, rumored at this point to be the great Robert De Niro, star of Michael Caton-Jones’ police thriller City By the Sea, which preems at WFF2002. De Niro was in Montreal last year to shoot The Score.

Visits from Godard & Besson

Godard, ‘the only philosopher of the moving image,’ according to WFF president Serge Losique, is scheduled to give two lectures: ‘The evolution of the cinema since the New Wave’ (Aug. 24) and ‘What will be the future of the cinema’ (Aug. 25). The lectures will be held at the Agora in Complex Desjardins, adjacent to festival headquarters at the Wyndham Hotel.

One of the great personalities of the French New Wave, Godard’s career stretches over six decades and includes Eloge de l’amour (2001), the Histoires du cinema anthology, Nouvelle vague (1990), Prenom Carmen (1984), La Chinoise (1967), and A bout de souffle (1960).

As for Besson, he is currently one of Europe’s most successful director/producers, and is also active in distribution through Europa Corp. and in post-production through his studio, Digital Factory. His filmography as a director includes Subway (1985), Nikita (1990), the U.S. studio release The Fifth Element (1997) and Jeanne d’Arc/The Messenger (1999). As a producer, his credits include the box-office hits Taxi 1, 2 and 3, Kiss of the Dragon/Baiser mortel du Dragon (2001), Wasabi (2001) and Peau d’Ange (2002).

International competition

Many of the international films in competition are from first-time and lesser-known directors, but several established directors are also competing this year, among them, French actor Sophie Marceau with her feature debut Parlez-moi d’amour (France); Carlos Saura’s Salome (Spain), a biblical adaptation set in the world of dance; festival regular Raul Ruiz with Rapsodie Chilienne (Chile); and director George Sluizer’s strange story of oceanic cataclysm, The Stoneraft (The Netherlands).

Some of the other competition entries are Diego Arsuaga’s political satire The Last Train, a Uruguay/Spain/Argentina coproduction; Russian director Alex Balabanov’s Chechnyan war drama The War; Emidio Greco’s late 18th century story of intrigue, The Council of Egypt, an Italy/France/Hungary coproduction; and Italian director Cristina Comemcini’s family drama The Best Day of My Life.

Also in competition: Iranian director Alireza Raisan’s The Desert Station; German director Anne Wild’s story of an unusual friendship, My First Miracle; Vincent Perez’s tale of star-crossed lovers, Peau d’Ange; Chinese director Hu Mei’s On the Other Side of the Bridge, a China/Austria coproduction; Sai Fu’s and Mai Lisi’s Heavenly Grasslands, about a young Han boy shipped off to the Mongolian grasslands; and two American indie films on the subject of youthful quests, Karen Moncrieff’s Blue Car (Alliance Atlantis) and Burr Steers’ Igby Goes Down.

NFB at WFF2002

The festival has selected four animated shorts from the National Film Board for official competition. Four new NFB documentaries and four additional animation shorts are programmed in the Panorama Canada section. The film board will also present the Norman McLaren Award in the 33rd Canadian Student Film & Video Festival Aug. 24 to 28.

Shorts in competition include director Tali’s comedic Pirouette/La Pirouette, the visually stunning Loon Dreaming/Le Reve du huard by filmmaker Iriz Paabo; Angeli by Lejf Marcussen, acclaimed Danish director of Public Voice (Den offentlige rost), and Stiltwalkers/Les Echassiers by Sjaak Meilink, coproduced with the Netherlands Institute for Animation Film.

NFB documentary highlights in the Panorama Canada section include the world premiere of Paule Baillargeon’s feature-length doc Claude Jutra, portrait sur film/Claude Jutra, An Unfinished Story, coproduced by Anne Frank for Fox-Fire Films, Andre Theberge for Production Docu 2, and Nicole Lamothe and Yves Bisaillon for the NFB.

Also screening: Oscar winner Beverly Shaffer’s portrait of a woman’s quest for her mother, To My Birthmother; director Thierry Le Brun’s search for the real meaning of the motto ‘Je me souviens,’ Un Certain souvenir; and Jean Lemire’s and Frederic Back’s mixed-media ode to nature, Memoires de la terre/Memories of Earth, a record of the meeting of two artistic worlds, the Haida people of the West Coast and Canadian animation master Back. Memoires was produced by Lemire, Claude Cartier and Roger Frappier for Max Films and is distributed by the NFB.

The four NFB animated shorts in this year’s Panorama Canada section are all produced by Marcy Page. They are: Oscar-nominated animator Chris Hinton’s In Flux; Diane Obomsawin’s In Elbow Room/Distances; Oscar-winning director John Weldon’s In the Hungry Squid, the hilarious story of the animals, including the giant squid, and their voracious appetite for Dorothy’s homework; and Anna Tchernakova’s and Georgine Strathy’s Sea and Stars, a ‘love story’ between an ordinary fisherman and a young mai-mai fish.

Since its creation in 1939, the NFB has produced more than 10,000 films and won over 4,000 awards, including 10 Oscars.

Panorama Canada

Features programmed in the Panorama Canada section include Boris Mojsovski’s Three and a Half, Bruce Lapointe’s portrait of childhood Two Summers (Image Harvest Films) and Phyllis Katrapani’s poetic reflection Home (Ile blanche and Cinema Libre).

(Home will be broadcast over the Internet compliments of Telus broadband services and originated from the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal on Aug. 27 at 7 p.m.)

Also on the program: veteran director Harry Rasky’s Nobody Swings on Sunday (CBC), a look back at growing up in Toronto in the 1930s; and Matthew Bissonnette’s and Steven Clark’s feature debut Looking for Leonard (as in literary icon Leonard Cohen), starring Kim Huffman, Joel Bissonnette, Ben Ratner, Justin Pierce and Molly Parker and produced by Montreal’s Frustrated Films.

In Mojsovski’s Three and a Half, produced by Tom Strnad of Summer Pictures and based on a screenplay by Ryan Redford, Mike Thorn and Mojsovski, three artists – a writer, director and painter – imagine three stories of yearning and loneliness.

Originated on 35mm film by DOP Levko Mojsovski, the movie was shot on a shoestring budget over 20 days late last fall in the Toronto area and stars Gemini Award-winning actress Kim Huffman, as well as award-winning actors Barbara Gordon, Valerie Buhagiar and Matthew Ferguson. The production received financing from Telefilm Canada and support from Medallion-PFA, PS Production Services, Clairmont Camera and Fujifilm Canada.

The film was posted over three months and features ‘a magical’ Dolby Digital soundtrack. It is one of many festival entries seeking both Canadian and international distribution.

As a producer, Strnad has another film entitled The Quarry, an OMDC Calling Card dramatic short, screening at the festival.

Highlights also include Benedicte Ronfard’s Katryn’s Place; Brock Simpson’s Canada/U.K. coproduction Fancy Dancing (Norstar Filmed Entertainment); Ori Kowarsky’s Various Positions (producers Karen Powell and Lori Roth, Various Producers Ltd.), the story of a promising law student, his non-Jewish girlfriend and a family Passover celebration; Deborah Day’s story of a performance artist in child labor, Expecting (Perch Lake Pictures/Expecting Productions); and Jeffrey Erbach’s The Nature of Nicholas (Full Stop Films), a dramatic story about a 12-year-old boy.

Canadian films in the World Cinema and Cinema of Tomorrow sections include Quebec City director Nicholas Kinsey’s Women Without Wings (Cinegraphe Productions/Cinema Libre), a tale of an Albanian-Canadian woman torn between two lovers, starring Katya Gardner, Micheline Lanctot, Lowell Gasoi, Besa Imani, Chris Dyson and Linda Bush; Moussa Sene Absa’s Madame Brouette (Les Productions La Fete/MSA Productions [Senegal]/Productions La Lanterne [France]), and the latest from the popular Quebec brother directing team of Jean and Serge Gagne, Barbaloune (I.E.H. Promotions).

For the seventh consecutive year, Telefilm will present a pre-approved $25,000 contribution to the director of the best Canadian feature at the festival. Last year’s winner was Denis Chouinard for L’Ange de Goudron.

SilenceOnCourt.TV

Parallel with WFF, the International Film Market and the International Forum of New Technologies, SilenceOnCourt.TV, Radio-Canada’s short-film platform, is presenting the 2nd annual Competiton en ligne de court metrages, a Web competition program for short films. The director of this year’s winning entry, as determined by the website-visiting public, will be flown to next year’s Clermont-Ferrand short film festival in France, compliments of Telefilm. SODEC, which is pumping more than $425,000 into this year’s festival, is the primary funder of Quebec short-film production.

World Greats and TV films

The WFF World Greats section showcases prestige directors whose films are screened out of competition. Highlights include French director Francois Ozon’s 8 Femmes (Seville Pictures), the festival’s closing-night film, Polish director Krzystof Zanussi’s Suplement; U.K. director Michael Winterbottom’s Manchester club scene docudrama 24 Hour Party People; Amos Gitai’s historical drama Kedma, a France/Israel coproduction; and French director Michel Blanc’s Embrassez qui vous voudrez.

This section also includes Michael Caton-Jones highly anticipated New York murder mystery City by the Sea (Warner Bros.); Tonie Marshall’s Au plus pres du paradis (Maia Films, Cinemaginaire), a France/Canada coproduction starring Catherine Deneuve and William Hurt; French director Pascal Morelli’s Corto Maltese; and legendary director Werner Herzog’s Invincible, a U.K./Germany coproduction based on true events in pre-Nazi Germany, circa 1932.

Some of the best fare at WFF is in the cutting-edge TV Film section. This year’s showcase features 27 productions, including U.K. director Paul Jenkins’ Soldat, a doc portrait of the training regime for Russian soldiers; Canadian director Brian McKenna’s Sitting Bull (Galafilm Productions/Films Transit International), an entry in the new History Television anthology Chiefs; U.S. director Gayle Ferraro’s Anonymously Yours, stories about the sex trade in Southeast Asia; Gunnar Bergdahl’s extended interview with Ingmar Bergman, Ingmar Bergman: Intermezzo; Italian director Carmelo Bene’s marathon teleplay production Otello; and German director Gerold Hofman’s feature-length portrait of American cinema-direct pioneers, See What Happens – The Story of DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

WFF is the only category ‘A’ competitive festival in North America recognized by FIAPF.

-www.ffm-montreal.org