Village Gamer

Telefilm Canada is proud to announce that Canadian film will be in the spotlight at the 3rd Los Cabos International Film Festival (CIFF) in Mexico from November 12 to 16. Mommy by Xavier Dolan will unspool as a gala screening; Canadian directors Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand will be honoured with screenings of two of their classic films; Tu dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur), Trois histoires d’Indiens (Robert Morin)and Violent (Andrew Huculiak) will be in official competition; Piers Handling, Director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, will be a juror; and a Canadian delegation will take part in the first Mexico-United States-Canada Coproduction Forum.

“We are very pleased that Canada is being honoured at Los Cabos; for the last few years we have developed close relations with Latin America. A total of $80 million in production volume has been generated for the coproduction of six feature films and 10 television projects with various countries in five years,” said Carolle Brabant, Telefilm’s Executive Director. “The Mexico-United States-Canada Coproduction Forum will allow us to build bridges and position Canada as a partner of choice.”

Twelve Canadian films presented

Stéphane Lafleur, the director of Tu dors Nicole, which was part of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, and Andrew Huculiak, the director of Violent, will be in attendance to present their films in official competition. Robert Morin’s Trois histoires d’Indiens will also be presented in this category.

Mommy, which tied for the Jury Prize with Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language at the Cannes Film Festival and is Canada’s submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, will be screened in a special presentation, in the presence of director Xavier Dolan and producer Nancy Grant (Metafilms).

Among the four tributes paid this year at the Festival, director, screenwriter and producer Atom Egoyan as well as director, screenwriter and actor Denys Arcand, will be honoured. The two Canadians will attend the screening of two of their films: Egoyan’s The Captive (2014), which was in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Exotica (1994), which won the FIPRESCI Award, an honour presented at the Cannes by a jury of film critics, as well as Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions (2003), which won its share of awards, including the César for Best Film, the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, a first for a Canadian film still today, and The Reign of Beauty (2013).

Canadian short films Hole by Martin Edralin, Nul poisson où aller by Nicola Lemay and Janice Nadeau, and Sleeping Giant by Andrew Cividino will have the distinction of being shown before the Canadian feature films in official competition.

Canadian documentary Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story by Grant Baldwin will be screened as part of the Green Program.

Finally, TIFF Director and CEO Piers Handling will be a member of the Festival’s jury for films in official competition.

Mexico-United States-Canada Coproduction Forum

The first coproduction forum bringing together Mexico, the United States and Canada at Los Cabos will focus on reinforcing business ties with these three countries. Four projects in development per country have been selected, allowing their representatives to meet potential coproducers. The Canadian films are: Wolverine Hotel by Patricia Chica, Taganga by Ciro Guerra, X Quinientos by Juan Andrés Arango Garcia and Cobarde by Boris Rodriguez.

Highlights of the Forum include a networking event in partnership with SODEC and l’Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, and a panel on public funding and coproduction to be held on November 13. In addition, Canadian producers Jennifer Weiss (The Film Farm) and Nancy Grant (Metafilms) will participate in the session Meet Your Neighbors—Coproduction with Canada on November 14, to be moderated by Jan Miller (Lowenbe Holdings).