Autumn in Canada means watching the leaves change, eating crispy apples, and let’s face it, getting ready for winter. But although temperatures at home are getting cooler, our Canadian talent is heating the international film festivals this season!

Already this October, Canadian cinema was especially well-represented at the Busan International Film Festival, where Canada had six feature films selected at the festival, including three genre films. Canada also made a splash at the BFI London Film Festival, where it presented seven short films and three feature-length coproductions. Canada’s also representing at the Tokyo International Film Festival (October 25 to November 3, 2018), where in addition to a large selection of Canadian features, Maxime Giroux’s La Grande Noirceur (The Great Darkened Days) in the festival’s main competition, a first for Canada in a decade! Also participating are Ron Mann’s Carmine Street Guitars (Venice Film Festival 2018), Sophie Lorain’s Charlotte a du fun (Slut in a Good Way, Tribeca Film Festival 2018), and Sébastien Pilote’s La Disparition des Lucioles (The Fireflies Are Gone, Karlovy Vary 2018).

And next month, from November 15 to 25, our filmmakers are sure to wow everyone at Germany’s 67th Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival, where five Canadian features will be competing. In the official competition are: Katherine Jerkovic’s Roads in February (which was awarded Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival); Paul Barbeau’s À nous l’éternité (We Have Forever); and Sébastien Pilote’s La Disparition des Lucioles (The Fireflies Are Gone), hot off being named Best Canadian Feature at TIFF. And in the International Discoveries section, competing for the Audience Award, are Warren Sulatycky’s April in Autumn and Jean-François Asselin’s Nous sommes les autres (We Are The Others).

Canadian cinema thriving and traveling across the world
For a first-hand perspective on some positive effects of screening at an international film festival, Trench 11 producer Tyler Levine was interviewed by Randall King of the Winnipeg Free Press:

“Because it’s a World War One film, we thought (Europe) would be the place where there would be the largest appetite for it,” Levine says in a phone interview from Toronto.

“But the place where it seems to be landing the most right now is here at home and in Asia,” he says, crediting Telefilm with expanding the film’s reach. Telefilm was very helpful to help bring the film to Busan in South Korea, and it was likely those efforts which helped the Asian buyers see the film in a very advantageous light,” he says. “This film has sold to every country in Asia and throughout Europe, and in Canada and the U.S.”

Trench 11 was presented during Telefilm’s Perspective Canada market screenings at Busan 2017.

For more: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/movies/horror-upon-horror-491984881.html