Docs-in-progress – Canadian Showcase

SATURDAY 18 MAY 10:00 (1h30) – Doc Corner Screening Room  Advanced signing up required at doccorner@festival-cannes.fr, with priority to festival programmers and sales agents.  

Telefilm Canada, in partnership with Hot Docs and RIDM (The Montréal International Documentary Festival), is proud to showcase Canadian talent in Cannes. Canada’s long tradition of nurturing creative documentary is reflected in these four film projects by both up-and-coming and well-established creative teams. All are at the final stages of production and ready for festival selection.

THE SEA BETWEEN US (La mer entre nous)
Directed by: Marlene EDOYAN
Produced by: Marlene EDOYAN (Fauve Film)
Country of production: Canada
Completed in: June 2019
Contact: Marlene EDOYAN edoyanm@gmail .com

The film transports us into the lives of Hayat & Wafaa and to the city of Beirut, 25 years after the end of a bloody civil war . Through the intimate stories of these two female protagonists of different backgrounds and perspectives, we understand why the city’s neighbourhoods are still walled in by invisible boundaries and if reconciliation is possible in a country broken over religious and political ideology .

DAMASCUS DREAMS
Directed by: Emilie SERRI
Produced by: Audrey-Ann DUPUIS-PIERRE (Double Prise)
Country of production: Canada
Completed in: January 2020
Contact: Audrey-Ann DUPUIS-PIERRE audreyanndp@gmail .com

Faced with the conflict in Syria, Emilie, whose father is Syrian, tries to reconnect with her cultural heritage by imagining a fictional country able to contain both the memories of the newcomers she meets, her father’s and her own . Weaving together testimonies, archival material and performances, Damascus Dreams addresses questions of identity, memory and loss in the context of a war .

EULOGY FOR THE DEAD SEA
Directed by: Polina TEIF
Produced by: Polina TEIF (UNDRstatement)
Country of production: Canada
Completed in: March 2021
Contact: Polina TEIF – polinateif@gmail .com 

Eulogy for the Dead Sea is a meditative feature length documentary which parallels regional conflict in Jordan, Israel and the West Bank with severe environmental degradation around the Dead Sea, which is estimated to disappear by 2050 . In a land ravaged by war, loss is commonplace . Eulogy for the Dead Sea is a meditation on ecological grief that transcends borders .

FINDING SALLY
Directed by: Tamara Mariam DAWIT
Produced by: Isabelle COUTURE (Cat Bird Productions)
Country of production: Canada
Completed in: October 2019
Contact: Tamara Mariam DAWIT tamara@gobez .ca

Finding Sally tells the incredible story of a 23-year-old woman from an upper class family who became a communist rebel with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party . Her romances and ideals entangled her in the country’s revolutionary fever and landed her on the military government’s most wanted list . She went underground and her family never saw her again .