A pair of Quebec-mades will duke it out at the weekend box office, with Alliance Vivafilm pushing the drama Le banquet, while Seville Pictures opens Benoît Pilon’s feature drama directorial debut Ce qu’il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life). Both films are fresh off their premieres at Montreal’s World Film Festival.

It’s a busy weekend for Alliance, which also opens comedy spoof Disaster Movie — the latest from creators Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (the Scary Movie franchise) – and the drama Traitor, starring Don Cheadle as a mysterious U.S. special operations officer, and which shot partially in Hamilton, ON. The films will play on more than 2,000 North American screens.

Director Sébastien Rose’s Le banquet — about confrontations between a university professor, rector, and student leader — bows on 13 Quebec screens. It is produced by Pierre Even of Montreal’s Cirrus Communications, makers of box office hits Nitro and C.R.A.Z.Y.

In Ce qu’il faut pour vivre, acclaimed docmaker Pilon examines what life might have been like for an Inuit hunter shipped to a Quebec tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1950s, where he is unable to communicate or understand others. The film bows on 14 screens.

The weekend will also see Hollywood releases including the Twentieth Century Fox sci-fi thriller Babylon A.D. and the MGM freshman comedy College looking to dethrone current box office champ Tropic Thunder, being distributed in Canada by Paramount.

Meanwhile, Cineplex will debut a special sing-along version of Universal’s musical hit Mamma Mia! in 19 theatres this weekend in cities including Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto.