• Telefilm Canada has named five teams to its Comedy Lab program, putting their feature projects into a three-month mentoring and workshop process.

The joint effort with Just for Laughs starts next month, looking to bring the funny with: the workplace comedy Servitude from writer/producer Michael Sparaga and director Warren P. Sonoda; the rom-com That Burning Feeling from writer Nicolas Citton and producer/director Jason James; Ramington’s: Men of Steel from writer Sacha Pavlovic and producer Mark Montefiore; the ‘estrogen-fuelled’ western Saddlebags by writer Christine Lippa and producers Elizabeth Yake and Angela Heck; and Two of Me from writer/director Mina Shum and producer Stephen Hegyes.

• Chalk up another one for Xavier Dolan. The 20-year-old director and his trophy magnet I Killed My Mother won best Canadian feature at the close of the Vancouver International Film Festival on Sunday, taking $20,000. Other winners at VIFF included Pete McCormack’s boxing doc Facing Ali, which took the audience prize for documentaries. 65_RedRoses, a film about young cystic fibrosis patients, swept up prizes for both most popular Canadian doc and film, plus the artistic merit award for directors Nimisha Mukerji and Philip Lyall.

• EyeSteelFilms (Taqwacore, Up the Yangtze) will play opening night of the RIDM, which has selected its latest, Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home, as its opening film. The film, already turning heads, looks at the breakdown of traditional Chinese families amid the country’s booming economy. The Montreal doc festival opens Nov. 11.

• Speaking of festivals, some 50 films found distributors at the Toronto International Film Festival, according to organizers, who this week trumpeted last month’s ‘impressive’ 10 days of deal-making. The fete saw U.S. and international deals for some 50 titles including notables Creation, Chloe, Get Low, Micmacs, Lebanon and A Single Man.

• Australia’s Adam Elliot went home a winner from the Ottawa International Animation Festival, taking the grand prize for Mary and Max, a claymation feature voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Honorable mention went to My Dog Tulip by U.S. directors Paul and Sandra Fierlinger.

• Rogers Cable has added four channels from Asian broadcaster Star, to be followed by another three within the month. Hindi-language channels Star One and Star India News arrived on the cable system along with the Tamil Star Vjay. They will be followed by four Mandarin-language channels, broadcasting entertainment, movies, music and lifestyle programming.