Bell Media-owned Canal D and pay-TV network Super Channel have acquired Canadian TV rights to Jamie Kastner’s forthcoming documentary The Skyjacker’s Tale.

The deals come with the film having been awarded CAD$300,000 (US$274,500) in funding from the Canada Media Fund’s POV fund, after pitching at the Hot Docs Forum earlier this year.

The Skyjacker’s Tale tells the story of a convicted murderer who in 1984 hijacked an American Airlines jet and rerouted it to Cuba, where he has been living on the run ever since. Kastner has tracked down the fugitive, who is still on the FBI’s most-wanted list, and persuaded him to be interviewed on camera.

The film is being made via Kastner’s prodco Cave 7 Productions, with Diana Warme serving as coproducer. Super Channel and Canal D will now respectively serve as the doc’s lead English and French Canadian broadcasters.

“These are tough times in the world of doc financing,” Kastner said, “so I’m delighted to have two such creatively minded broadcasters on board, not to mention such generous support from CMF-POV. Rough as it is out there, I feel lucky to be based in Canada making POV films.”

The film is Kastner’s third project with Canal D and, though he has had projects in development with Super Channel in the past, this marks his first production deal with the pay-TV broadcaster. As previously reported, the doc was awarded an initial grant of $11,000 in development funding from the Shaw Media Hot Docs Fund.

Kastner’s most recent film, The Secret Disco Revolution, premiered at TIFF in Toronto in 2012. His other docs include Kike Like Me, Djangomania! and Free Trade is Killing My Mother.

The director says his latest film will be “a political thriller, an action film, and a whodunit,” and added that “there will be recreations and they cannot afford to be cheesy. This financing brings us a long way toward production – the landing strip is in sight.”

– from realscreen