Cannes Docs

Runtime: 99'

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: $255.000 USD (85% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Gap Financing, Strategic Guidance, Festivals

Synopsis:

JAYA is a non-binary Filipino comedian who survived Super Typhoon Haiyan but lost their TV career when the storm destroyed the studio where they hosted their local talk show. ASOG follows Jaya on a road trip to a drag pageant and along the way they encounter Filipinos enduring the impacts of climate change, including residents of Sicogon Island whose land was stolen in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.

Director’s profile:

Seán Devlin 叶 世民 is a Filipino-Canadian filmmaker and comedian. His debut feature WHEN THE STORM FADES is available on Amazon Prime and AMC+ / Sundance TV. It earned Devlin two international jury prizes for Best Director and the Emerging Canadian Director prize presented by the DGC at VIFF. It won Best Canadian Film (Gimli Film Festival) and two Vancouver Film Critics’ Awards. While screening at the 40th Cairo International Film Festival Devlin participated in Brillante Mendoza’s directing masterclass (the first Filipino to ever win “Best Director” at Cannes). Mendoza deepened Seán’s understanding of the Filipino cinematic practice of “found story”, directly shaping his 2nd feature ASOG. His debut album AIRPORTS. ANIMALS was nominated for the 2022 JUNO award for Comedy Album of the Year’. In 2023 he made his TV stand-up debut on Just For Laughs & CBC’s NEW WAVE OF STAND-UP.

Producer’s profile:

Amanda Ernst is an emerging Canadian film producer with over a decade of experience in artist and project management. As a producer at Beb Bingo Entertainment, Amanda oversees projects from the early development stage, financing, pre-production, on set, and through to distribution. Amanda is the lead producer on her first feature length film, docufiction hybrid ASOG, which will premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Currently Amanda serves as producer on a slate of projects including features, TV series, and an experimental Indigenous language adaptation project.

Runtime: 75'

Expected release: February, 2024

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: $115.000 CAD (100% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents, Distributors, Buyers

Synopsis:

200 years after Simón Bolívar’s liberation campaign across Colombia, The Soldier’s Lagoon retraces The Liberator’s journey across the high altitude marshlands while searching for glimpses of his ghost still present in this historically contested territory.

Director’s/Producer’s profile:

Pablo Alvarez-Mesa‘s films have played at international film festivals including Berlinale, IFFR, MoMA, Visions du Reel, and RIDM. His most recent film looking into Simón Bolívar’s battles of Independence and titled “Bicentenario” played at the 2021 Berlinale, MoMA Doc Fortnight and Viennale amongst other festivals and earned a Jury Mention at Festival Punto de Vista in the Main Competition. “The Soldier’s Lagoon” is the second in a trilogy of films tracing Bolivar’s path through Colombia. Pablo is an affiliate member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, and is Artist in Residence at Fogo Island Arts. Pablo’s interest in documentary lies in the relationship between fact and fiction; between what is recalled and what is inevitably constructed. His films all touch in one way or another issues of displacement, history and collective memory.

Runtime: 90', 44'

Expected release: November, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: $615.500 (92% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: A list Festivals, European Distributors

Synopsis:

The Death Tour is a feature documentary following professional wrestlers on “the hardest tour in indie wrestling”. For weeks, these wrestlers travel across frozen lakes to put on shows for Canada’s most remote Indigenous communities. Sleeping on floors and eating canned food, this trip will force each wrestler to draw from their checkered pasts if they dare dream of a future in wrestling.

Director’s profile:

Stephan Peterson (Director/ Writer) is a Canadian Screen Award nominated documentary director, shooter, and story-editor. Since 2014, Stephan has been traveling the world shooting and directing TV series for CBC, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, Velocity and Motor Trends. Stephan’s experience working as a both a director and story editor on series like Big Rig Warriors (History), Hellfire Heroes (Discovery), Mega Trains (Discovery) and Restoration Garage (Velocity) has given him the ability to follow story in the field and to carefully craft it in the edit suite. Having directed on Ice Road Truckers (History), Cold Water Cowboys (Discovery), and Licence to Drill (Discovery), Stephan has proven he has what it takes to work with multiple characters in extreme conditions. This experience will serve him well in the filming of Death Tour, his first feature documentary.

Co-Director’s profile:

Sonya Ballantyne is a Swampy Cree writer and filmmaker from the Misipawistik Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Her work focuses on contemporary and futuristic portrayals of Indigenous women and girls. Her published works include children’s book Kerri Berry Lynn as well as contributions to anthologies such as Pros and Comic Cons and Resurgence. She has written for numerous creative properties such as Sesame Street, The Walking Dead: LAST MILE and CTV’s Acting Good. She was recently nominated for a Writer’s Guild of Canada award for her work on Acting Good. The Death Tour is her feature directorial debut.

Producer’s profile:

Sergeo Kirby has been producing, directing and filming award-winning feature documentaries for two decades. Notable credits include THE FORBIDDEN REEL, ABU, SHINERS, PATSY, H2Oil, ROADSWORTH, WAL-TOWN, and FENNARIO: THE GOOD FIGHT. Sergeo is the founding member of Loaded Pictures, a Montreal based documentary film company focusing on complex social documentaries. His documentaries have been seen on CBC, the Documentary Channel, GlobalTV, Canal D, Discovery, the Sundance Channel, and Bravo! among others and have been screened at hundreds of film festivals around the world. In 2017 ABU won the best documentary prize at 14 film festivals and SHINERS, released in the same year, won best documentary at 5 film festivals.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: January, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: $499.640 (100% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents, Distributors, Buyers

Synopsis:

Noriko Oi, a Japanese-Canadian woman, returns to her native land in the hopes of reviving her deceased mother’s memories, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, while emptying her childhood home. What is left of memories when families’ secrets are locked away and end up casting a shadow over the collective recollections?

Director’s profile:

In 2017, Laurence directed a short fiction film, DRAP CONTOUR, which won several international awards. She then signed a short documentary, PORT D’ATTACHE, in 2019. The film was selected at the prestigious Visions du Réel, won the Best National Short Film Award at RIDM and was nominated for best short film at the Québec-Cinéma gala. In 2022, Laurence completes a master’s degree in which she reflects on documentary writing and directing. MAMA NO HIMITSU is her first feature film.

Producer’s profile:

After graduating from the Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy in 2012 where she studied acting, Catherine Boily then started to get involved as a producer on various projects. Moving back to Montreal in 2015, she met Sylvain Corbeil and Nancy Grant from Metafilms, with whom she’s been working with since. Under Metafilms, Catherine has produced many short films and music videos, in addition to working multiple positions on feature films shot in Canada, the United States, Czech Republic, England and Namibia. Most recently, she was also an Executive Producer with Martin Scorcese on the latest Paul Schrader movie The Card Counter, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Biennale. Catherine is now developing emerging talents’ feature films projects at Metafilms.
Rosalie Chicoine Perreault searches for projects and filmmakers with a unique vision that stand out from the current cinematographic landscape, both in fiction and documentary. Amongst her most recent projects, GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE (Jacquelyn Mills, 2022), her first feature documentary, was awarded three prizes during its world premiere at the 72nd Berlinale, in addition to winning Best Canadian Feature at Hot Docs. “