Telefilm Canada has handed out $12.8 million to support English and third-languages features from filmmakers including Laura Adkin, Rob Grant, and Heather Young.

The funder has selected 21 feature films from over 300 submissions to its Production Program, with English-language titles such as Adkin’s (The Ride Home) feature-length directorial debut, Re:Uniting. The film will be produced by her Vancouver-based banner Flat Head Films. Krista Rand (Grand Unified Theory) also serves as a producer, while the screenplay is also written by Adkin.

Grant (Mon Ami) is the director and screenwriter of the drama This Too Shall Pass, produced by Toronto’s Peterson Polaris Corp. The drama There, There, from director and screenwriter Young (Murmur), is produced by her banner Houseplant Films and Halifax’s Brass Door Productions.

Melanie Oates (Body & Bones) is the director and screenwriter of the drama Sweet Baby Angel, produced by St. John’s-based Relatable Films. The horror Replacer is directed by Randall Okita (See for Me) and written by Zac Thompson (Yondu), author of the comic book on which the film is based. It’s produced by Toronto’s Play Management Media.

Paying For It, based on the graphic novel by Chester Brown, is directed by Sook-Yin Lee (Octavio is Dead), who is also the screenwriter alongside Joanne Sarazen (Tammy’s Always Dying). The producers are Toronto’s Wildling Pictures and Hawkeye Pictures.

Sci-fi fantasy feature The Music Box is directed by Jay Dahl (Halloween Party), who is also the screenwriter alongside Kristin Langille (Let’s Get Physical), with Halifax producers Black Dog Films and Connection Productions.

Additional dramas include Monica’s News from director and screenwriter Pamela Gallant (La voisine), produced by Halifax’s Picture Plant; and Drive Back Home, written and directed by Michael Clowater (Four Eyes) and produced by Toronto’s Woods Entertainment and Mason Films.

Other English-language features include The Invisibles, directed by Andrew Currie (The Steps), who also serves as a screenwriter with Colin Aussant (Panther!), produced by Toronto’s Quadrant Motion Pictures; thriller Best Boy, directed and written by Jesse Noah Klein (Like a House on Fire), and produced by Quebec’s Chasseurs films; and the sci-fi fantasy The Bearded Girl, directed and written by Jody Wilson (Indigo), with Vancouver-based producer Goodbye Productions.

D.W. Waterson’s (The D Cut) drama Backspot, co-written with Joanne Sarazen (Tammy’s Always Dying), is produced by Toronto’s Prospero Pictures; and Aversion, directed and written by Thom Fitzgerald (Cam Boy),  and produced under his Nova Scotia banner Emotion Pictures.

The rest of the funding is spread out among third-language feature films such as the comedy Une langue universelle from director and screenwriter Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century), which is in Persian, French and English and produced by Montreal’s Metafilms; the Japanese and English drama Akashi, directed and written by Mayumi Yoshida (The Man in the High Castle) and produced by Vancouver’s Musubi Arts and Experimental Forest Films; English and Hindi drama Shook, directed by Amar Wala (In the Making), who co-wrote with Adnan Khan (There Has to Be a Knife). Shook is produced by Wala’s Toronto-based banner Scarborough Pictures and Film Forge Productions.

Coproductions that have received funding include writer and director Frieda Luk’s (The Encounter) English and Italian drama Sacred Creatures, produced by Luk’s Vancouver-based Frirange Films and Italy’s Doppio Nodo Double Bind; Arabic drama Motherhood from director and screenwriter Meryam Joobeur (Brotherhood), produced by Montreal’s Leona Films and France’s Tanit Films; and the Spanish Castillian and English historical drama La Estrella al Lado de la Luna, directed and written by Andrea Alvarez (Sol). The Canada-Colombia copro is produced by Alvarez’s Vancouver-based Studio 104 Entertainment and Colombia’s Imaginer Films.

Lastly, English and Turkish drama Loya, directed and written by Sibel Guvenc (End of the Rope), is a Canada-Germany copro between Guvenc’s Toronto-based Kybele Films and Vancouver’s Cedar Island Films, as well as Germany’s Tradewind Pictures.

Last month, the Crown corporation allocated $5.5 million in production funding to eight French-language films.

This year, an advisory committee assessed the applications for the funding program, where the decision-making process “considered Telefilm’s goal of fostering a diversity of voices in the industry and ensured it contained a balanced portfolio of productions that reflect a variety of  genres, budgets, company sizes, regions and points of view,” said a news release.

This is a corrected story. A previous version erroneously reported that The Invisibles film is based on a comic book. In fact, it is based entirely on an original concept created by Andrew Currie, and has no connection to any other property including any comic strip. Playback regrets the error. 

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