Canadian filmmaker Rafael Ouellet brought his third low-budget feature, New Denmark, to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2009.

Now he’s back in Karlovy Vary this week to debut his fourth feature, Camion, in official competition, as he uses the Czech Republic as an international port of call to build goodwill with Canadian film funders and audiences back home.

“It’s good for my reputation with Telefilm Canada and SODEC,” Ouellet told Playback Daily, as he added a breakout success for Camion on the international festival circuit could generate positive word for the French-language drama with Canadian cinema-goers.

The French-language drama about an experience truck driver trying to put his life back together in rural Quebec with two estranged sons after a deadly car accident drew a capacity audience on Sunday to the Grand Hall at the Thermal Hotel.

That’s a good start for Telefilm Canada as its new “success index” strategy aims to make Canadian directors that are bookable on the international festival circuit more bankable with film distributors at home and abroad, and so more successful at the theatrical box office and beyond.

And Ouellet, in returning to Karlovy Vary, fits nicely into that sweet spot for Telefilm Canada.

“Canadians are known around the world, and in Karlovy Vary,” Quebec actor Francois Papineau, and a member of Karlovy Vary’s Grand Jury this year, proudly told a Canada Day celebration in a rustic hunting lodge atop a local mountain where Ouellet and the directors and cast from other Canadians films at the Czech resort festival were introduced and feted.

The celebration of Canadian film played to a lodge full of regulars of the international film festival circuit, including directors, producers and distributors.

Together, the international players represent the web of power relations to which Canadians need to build ties with if Telefilm Canada’s strategy to see more homegrown films sought out and screen at international festivals like Karlovy Vary is to pay out back home.

So Ouellet did his part this week to talk up his fellow Canadian filmmakers, especially in Quebec.

“We have plenty of great filmmakers in Quebec. We have a nice new generation coming up, and we have our masters,” he told the Camion press conference.

“But I don’t want to follow the masters as I don’t feel I’m up to them,” he added with his trademark modesty.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival continues to July 7.