Village Gamer

Telefilm Canada has announced its support, through the Canada Feature Film Fund, for the production of seven English- and French-language feature films, five of which are lower budget (budget of less than $2.5 million). The total investment amounts to more than $7 million. The films selected are Chameau Lion Enfant (Stéphane Beaudoin),The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship (Sergio Navarretta), The End of Days at Godfrey Global Inventory (Jennifer Liao), Natasha (David Bezmozgis),October Gale (Ruba Nadda), Remember (Atom Egoyan) and Le Scaphandrier (Alain Vézina).

“Behind the success of Canadian cinema are both established filmmakers, who are given the chance to broaden their impact around the world, and upcoming directors, who are given the opportunity to learn and grow,” said Carolle Brabant, Executive Director of Telefilm Canada. “With this selection of seven films, we’re ensuring a diversity of stories, by funding the latest projects from the renowned Atom Egoyan and Ruba Nadda as well as the works of emerging talent like Alain Vézina, Stéphane Beaudoin, Jennifer Liao, David Bezmozgis and Sergio Navarretta.”

Ontario and Nunavut Region

The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship*
Director: Sergio Navarretta
Screenwriter: Alessandra Piccione
Production: Platinum Image Film
Genre: Comedy
Confirmed talent: Krista Bridges (Republic of Doyle), Enrico Colantoni (Flashpoint), David Cubitt (Medium)

Cat has a mediocre job, a dull social life and her relationship with Freddy is not particularly pleasant, but things happen quickly when Cat meets Freddy’s boss, Richard. Charming, intelligent and wonderfully self-assured, he is everything Freddy is not and Cat falls for his charms. Guilt-ridden, Cat stops seeing Richard and, in a final attempt to save her relationship with Freddy, suggests a romantic getaway to him on the wine route. Cat is taken by surprise when she realizes that Richard and his cheerful, perfect girlfriend Amy are on the trip.

The End of Days at Godfrey Global Inventory*
Director: Jennifer Liao
Screenwriter: Christina Ray
Production: Godfrey Film Production
Genre: Comedy
Confirmed talent: Mark O’Brien, Paulino Nunes, Carolyne Maraghi, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Janet Porter, Anna Ferguson, Yulia Petrauskas

Release: Winter/Spring 2015

This black comedy with a supernatural element tells the story of workers in a mysterious company who have been laid off and have been bribed to do one last work shift. But the group rapidly discovers that this last evening of work will have cataclysmic consequences.

Natasha*
Director: David Bezmozgis
Screenwriter: David Bezmozgis
Production: January Films, Vortex Comics
Distribution: Mongrel Media
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Alex Ozerov (Blackbird), Sasha K. Gordon

Release: Spring 2015

Natasha takes place over the course of one summer. It is the story of Mark Berman, 16, the son of Russian immigrants living in the suburbs north of Toronto. When his uncle enters into an arranged marriage with a woman from Moscow, the woman arrives in Canada with her fourteen year-old daughter, Natasha. Mark, a slacker, is conscripted by his parents to take responsibility for the strange girl. He learns that, in Moscow, she’d led a troubled and promiscuous life. A secret and forbidden romance begins between the two of them that has bizarre and tragic consequences for everyone involved.

October Gale (a special presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014)
Director: Ruba Nadda (Cairo Time, Sabah)
Screenwriter: Ruba Nadda
Production: Killer Films, Foundry Films
Distribution: Pacific Northwest Pictures
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Patricia Clarkson (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Scott Speedman (Underworld), Callum Keith Rennie (Californication), Tim Roth (The Incredible Hulk)

During a violent April storm, a young man washes up on the shore of Helen Matthews’s remote island cottage. He is unconscious and bleeding from a gunshot wound. Helen, a recently widowed doctor, takes him in and saves his life. But the storm has cut her off from the mainland, and the men who shot him are coming to finish the job.

Remember (majority Canadian coproduction with Germany)
Director: Atom Egoyan (The Captive, The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica)
Screenwriter: Ben August
Production: Serendipity Point Films
Distribution: Entertainment One
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Christopher Plummer (A Beautiful Mind, The Sound of Music), Martin Landau (Ed Wood), Dean Norris, Bruno Ganz (Downfall), Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot), Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible), Heinz Lieven

Remember is a fascinating thriller about a contemporary mission to change the course of the most tragic events of the twentieth century.

Quebec Region

Chameau Lion Enfant*
Director: Stéphane Beaudoin
Screenwriter: Sophie-Anne Beaudry
Production: Les Productions L’Art Sali
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Sébastien Delorme (La petite reine), Frédéric Lemay, Yves Soutière, Nathalie Coupal, Stéphane Brulotte, Martin-David Peters, Étienne Pilon, Geneviève Bédard, Katrine Duhaime, Marie-Chantal Nadeau, Catherine-Audrey Lachapelle, Émile Schneider, Félix-Antoine Boutin

Release: Fall 2015

The film tells the story of Alex, who leaves his studies and his family to live in the isolated countryside and follow his new lover, who is part of a rather unusual community. The group’s guru, basing himself on Nietzsche’s philosophy, offers followers a lifestyle advocating discovery of the true self through suppression of all moral values.

Le Scaphandrier*
Director: Alain Vézina
Screenwriter: Alain Vézina
Production: Les Productions Cinématographiques Boréal Films
Distribution: Filmoption International
Genre: Horror
Confirmed talent: Édith Côté-Demers, Alexandre Landry (Gabrielle, TIFF Rising Stars 2014), Raymond Bouchard (La grande séduction)

Release: Winter 2015

A ship is found adrift and its crew massacred off the Gaspé coast. Tragedy. In the commotion, an ambitious journalist, assisted by a young, rather timid and sedentary museologist-archivist, discovers that a collector of maritime objects with dubious intentions may be connected to this tragic story. Thus begins a race against the clock to discover the identity of the mysterious Scaphandrier (deep-sea diver) who decimates everything in his wake to reach his goals and retrieve a precious document plundered from the wreck of the Princess of the North, which sunk 100 years earlier…

*Lower budget feature films