Entering its 15th year, the Banff Television Festival’s International Market Simulation is a must-attend event at the festival and has been transplanted at various programming conferences around the world.

The Market Simulation offers producers the opportunity to pitch their projects to an international audience of programmers, financiers and buyers. Not only do producers get to suss out potential interest, but with ringleader Pat Ferns urging the international broadcasting reps to lay down some cash, anything can happen – including the producers’ dream of landing a development deal on the spot.

Three projects in the drama and entertainment genre will be pitched at this year’s Market Simulation, with an additional three in the documentary, kids’ and educational programming category.

Following are some of the projects stepping up to the pitcher’s mound. . .

As coproducers and codirectors of When Two Won’t Do, Maureen Marovitch and David Finch of Montreal’s Picture This Productions are a perfect match, but as longtime lovers, they are in total conflict. Maureen wants an open relationship and David is hell-bent on monogamy.

But instead of breaking up, they’ve decided to take their conflict into the realm of documentary to explore different forms of non-monogamy, from polyamory and swinging to cheating and open marriages. Along the way, the couple will learn, on-camera, just how open their hard-won relationship can be, before it begins to rip apart at the seams.

‘While the project focuses on our relationship, it also questions whether people are actually meant for monogamy. . . whether these new relationship structures are the wave of the future or the harbinger of North American societal collapse,’ says Marovitch.

A cross between Michael Moore’s Roger and Me and Ross McElree’s Sherman’s March, When Two Won’t Do is budgeted at $425,000 and is being pitched as a feature-length version and a one-hour version.

With exec producer Arnie Gelbart of Galafilm, Montreal, and a half-shot project in tow, the team heads off to Banff in search of completion money and distributors.

‘Among the many, we’d love to run it on hbo, Witness [cbc], tvontario or Channel 4,’ says Marovitch, who’s been developing the project with Finch for two years.

From a polyamory convention in the Catskills, a 2,000-couple swingers’ weekend in Las Vegas, to confessions of ‘cheating’ in Montreal, the project has been and will continue to be shot across North America.

‘It’s not for kids, but it’s also not one big on-screen orgy,’ promises Marovitch, who has won two fellowships to the Banff Television Festival (1994 and 1997) and has been producing documentaries for cbc for more than five years.

Marovitch and Finch founded Picture This five years ago, when they codirected and cowrote their first project together, Longshots, which aired on CBC Newsworld, and amid much acclaim, won the best editing award at Hot Docs in 1994.