The already choppy waters of Canadian distribution turned to white caps on Tuesday, when Robert Lantos announced his long-expected return to the theatrical releasing game, putting execs from his days at Alliance Communications at the helm of two new companies, Maximum Film Distribution and Maximum Films International.

As previously reported in Playback Daily, Lantos loyalists Charlotte Mickie and Anthony Cianciotta have been brought back into the fold. The latter has been installed at MFD, which will distribute domestic and foreign titles in Canada, while Mickie buys and sells indie films on the international scene.

MFD arrives with an output deal already in place with IFC Films, covering the Canadian rights for all its titles, which include forthcoming buzz-maker The Flight of the Red Balloon by Hou Hsiao Hsien and Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. The company says it will seek partnerships with producers and distributors at home and abroad, picking up titles on either a film-by-film basis or through other long-term agreements. It will distribute in English and French.

MFD’s slate also includes the TIFF opener Fugitive Pieces, which Lantos produced through his Serendipity Point Films, Atom Egoyan’s upcoming Adoration, the 2007 Camera d’Or winner Jelly Fish and Kenneth Branagh’s The Magic Flute.

A number of those titles will also be repped by Maximum Films International, which has Pieces and Adoration along with Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, the India/U.K./U.S. copro Before the Rains by Santosh Sivan, Real Time by Randall Cole (19 Months) and Cold Souls by Sophie Barthes (Happiness) on its slate.

Mickie has been buying for MFI since joining in July and is betting that debuts at next month’s TIFF will give a boost to her titles. ‘None of them have had very much exposure at all,’ she tells Playback Daily, citing the world premiere of Pieces and the as-yet-unshot Adoration. She thinks Pieces will play well in France, among other territories, and notes that Egoyan ‘sells everywhere.’

Cianciotta was previously at Capri Releasing. Mickie was with Paris-based Celluloid Dreams and, before that, Alliance. Both worked at Alliance Communications (later part of Alliance Atlantis Communications) during the 1990s under Lantos. Mickie was SVP of film sales at Alliance International, Cianciotta was VP and GM of Alliance Releasing.

Both are now working with Serendipity lawyer Mark Musselman, who is overseeing business affairs for MFD and MFI.

The return of Lantos, astride the Maximums, adds to the upheaval that has marked Canadian distribution since last year, beginning with the sale of ThinkFilm into the U.S., the buyout of Motion Picture Distribution parent Alliance Atlantis and the sudden and aggressive growth of Entertainment One, which earlier this month bought Seville Pictures under the guidance of president and former AAC exec Patrice Théroux.

Lantos left the movie distribution game in 1998 when Alliance merged with rival Atlantis Communications. He went on to produce films through Serendipity Point and, until last year, had a near-50% stake in ThinkFilm. He recently returned to TV distribution when he and former TriStar Pictures president Jeff Sagansky made an unspecified investment in Blueprint Entertainment, the Los Angeles/Toronto company run by former Alliance employees John Morayniss and Noreen Halpern.