– Joyeux calvaire benefit

Montreal: joyeux Calvaire, a Radio-Canada tv movie dramatizing the plight of the homeless, will have its premiere at a benefit screening Nov. 28 at the Imperial Cinema.

On its own terms, the production is a story of the little film that grew. The Claire Richard script for Joyeux Calvaire was introduced to filmmaker Denys Arcand by Radio-Canada program director Charles Ohayon. Shot on a budget of less than $800,000, the film has garnered interest to the tune of a 21-screen release by producer Cinemaginaire and FunFilm Distribution on Nov. 29.

The film chronicles a day in the life of two homeless men as they traverse the city and stars Benoit Briere and Gaston Lepage. Arcand became available when a feature project on the fashion industry in development with Toronto-based Alliance Communications fell through. Joyeux Calvaire is Arcand’s (Declin de l’empire americain, Jesus de Montreal, Love and Human Remains) first French-language project since 1989.

-Channel 4 and ZDF helm Two in a Room

For the fifth edition of Sharing Stories, Scotland’s annual international coproduction confab running Nov. 22-24 in Edinburgh, Jacquie Lawrence from Channel 4 in the u.k. and Vivien Marx from Germany’s zdf are confirmed as commissioning editors for Two in a Room, a live pitch session which gives delegates 24 hours to prepare a program proposal. The shortlisted delegates pitch on the last day of the conference for an opportunity to have their brainchild produced.

Canadian Thom Fitzgerald’s project Flipside-The Gay Mr. Universe was a joint winner last year, landing development money from Channel 4 and La Sept/arte in France.

Aside from screenings and case studies, the sked includes sessions on coproducing in minority languages, new sources of financing through multimedia, youth programming, coprod for Canadian drama, animation coprod with the u.s., and the cofunding and distribution of European features.