David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands with the Devil are set for a head-to-head battle at this year’s Genie Awards.

Both films received 12 nominations each, as the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television unveiled this year’s list of nominees on Monday, ahead of the March 3 Genies ceremony in Toronto.

Both Eastern Promises, coproduced by Serendipity Point Films and Britain’s Kudos Pictures, and Shake Hands with the Devil, from Halifax Film and Barna-Alper Productions, are up for best picture honors as well as a host of craft Genies, including best cinematography, art direction, original score and sound.

Genie voters also heaped praise on Sarah Polley’s Away from Her, which earned seven nods, including best picture.

Polley also grabbed nominations for best director and best adapted screenplay, for which she is also up for an Oscar.

Rounding out the best Canadian film competition are two Quebec films, Denys Arcand’s L’âge des ténèbres and Stéphane Lafleur’s Continental, un film sans fusil.

The best film category also provides a form guide for the best actor competition, where Eastern Promises‘ Oscar-nominated Viggo Mortensen will duke it out with Shake Hands‘ Roy Dupuis, Away from Her‘s Gordon Pinsent, Marc Labrèche of L’âge des ténèbres and Claude Legault from Les 3 p’tits cochons.

The best actress competition is more wide open, with screen icon Julie Christie, favored to win an Oscar for her star turn in Away from Her, competing against Anne-Marie Cadieux for Toi, Molly Parker for Who Loves the Sun, a low-budget film by husband Matt Bissonnette, current indie darling Ellen Page for Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments and Béatrice Picard for Ma tante Aline.

The Tracey Fragments scored six nominations overall, including best director for McDonald and editing for Jeremiah Munce and Gareth Scales.

This year’s Genies is also notable for the strong performance of English-language Canadian films, in contrast to recent years where Quebec films dominated Canada’s film awards.

With next month’s Academy Awards red carpet extravaganza a maybe amid the U.S. writers strike, Genie organizers hope glitz-deprived Canadian TV viewers will tune in when the Canadian kudofest airs nationwide on the E! network and IFC nine days after the Oscars telecast on CTV.

‘We always hope for good numbers. It’s hard to predict whether there will be any impact from the Oscars. The Oscars are still planning to go on as planned,’ Sara Morton, CEO of ACCT, said Monday.

She added her delight at seeing so much Oscar-nominated talent from Canadian films similarly competing at the Genies.

Organizers will gauge in the coming weeks which nominated actors will show up at the Genies to ensure star wattage for the event.

The Genies will also revert this year to a Golden Globes format for the March 3 ceremony, putting nominees and attendees around tables in a ballroom setting, rather than the theater seating chosen for the last two Genies.

Morton said allowing the champagne to flow in an ‘all-night party’ atmosphere aims to engage TV viewers.

‘It’s all part of representing an event that looks like it’s celebratory and enjoyed by people in the audience, and that becomes contagious to the audience at home,’ Morton said.

See www.genieawards.ca for a complete list of nominees.