Andrew Cividino’s latest feature project Furies has received approximately CAD$541,000 (€360,000) via the European film-funding body Eurimages.

Produced by Toronto’s Rhombus Media and based on screenwriter Nicolas Billon’s play Butcher, the project tells of mysterious old man who is found at a police station wearing a foreign military uniform and a Santa hat, with a meat hook dangling around his neck. The feature is being structured as a Canada/Belgium copro, with Liège, Belgium-based GapBusters coproducing. Elevation Pictures is attached as the film’s Canadian distributor.

Rhombus first announced the project as part of its in-development film slate in summer 2016, with Sleeping Giant director Cividino adapting the play in collaboration with Billon. Cividino told Playback Daily that after seeing the play and being “blown away by how cinematic it could be,” he and Rhombus pursued the screen rights to the project. Billon (a Playback 5 to Watch alum) has also written for TV, working on Temple Street’s X Company. Another of his stage plays, Elephant Song, was also adapted as a feature film, directed by Charles Binamé.

Eurimages has proved to be useful source of financing for Canadian copros since Canada became the first non-European country to join the fund last year. The first Canadian copro to receive Eurimages coin was Samara Chadwick’s Moncton-shot doc 1999 (Wish You Were Here), which received €80,000, while subsequent funding rounds have seen Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project (€360,000), and Sweetness in the Belly, produced by Toronto’s Sienna Films and Dublin- and London-based Parallel Film Productions, also tap into the fund.

“There’s always that challenge of figuring out how you’re going to close your [funding] gap, as an English-Canadian film, so it’s a huge shot in the arm,” said Cividino.

Furies is his sophomore feature project and follows Sleeping Giant, which premiered at Cannes in the Critic’s Week sidebar in 2015 and went on to garner significant critical acclaim.

Cividino said the recognition Sleeping Giant received opened a number of doors to him, especially in television. Since the film’s Canadian release in March 2016 via D Films, Cividino has directed a number of episodes for CBC’s Schitt’s Creek. He is also developing a series adaptation of Yann Martel’s 2004 novel We Ate the Children Last. The project is currently in development with Bell Media and Cividino’s production banner Film Forge. Cividino added that he’s in development on a third feature.