Super Channel and Canadian Film Fest are partnering again this year to bring the Festival home to Canadians!
Beginning Thursday, April 1 and running for three consecutive weekends, nine feature films will premiere on Super Channel Fuse on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. All festival feature films will have a linear only limited run, so viewers are encouraged to catch them while they can and experience them festival-style during their linear broadcast. In addition, 30 short films from the CFF will be interspersed into the schedule around the feature film presentations for viewers to enjoy as part of the film festival experience.
Virtually, pre-recorded and live Q&As with filmmakers will be made available, in addition to access to industry programs online (panel discussions, masterclass) and a virtual awards presentation.
Opening the Festival this year is Sugar Daddy (dir. Wendy Morgan), starring Kelly McCormack (Letterkenny, A Simple Favour) and Colm Feore (The Umbrella Academy, Sensitive Skin, The Borgias), which follows a young talented musician who signs up to a paid dating website which takes her down a dark path – and her music along with it. Closing out the festival on April 17, will be Range Roads (dir. Kyle Thomas) making its Canadian premiere. Starring Alana Hawley-Purvis (The Great Fear) and Joe Perry (Everfall, Blood Mountain), this poignant film is an intimate story of grief, longing, and forgiveness, that explores the painful and beautiful complexities of what it means to be a family.
A complete list of Films below:
Thursday, April 1: Sugar Daddy (Drama) – Toronto premiere
Director: Wendy Morgan
Cast: Kelly McCormack, Colm Feore, Amanda Brugel, Ishan Davé, Nicholas Campbell, Kaniehtiio Horn, Aaron Ashmore, Noam Jenkins
Darren is a wickedly talented and unconventional young musician who dreams of making music like nobody has ever heard before. But she’s broke, juggling multiple part-time jobs, and has no time to create. Desperate for cash, she signs up to a sugar daddy paid-dating website and throws herself down a dark rabbit hole that forces her to grow up fast, shaping her music, and how she sees the world.
Friday, April 2: White Elephant (Drama) – Toronto premiere
Director: Andrew Chung
Cast: Zaarin Bushra, Gurleen Singh, Dulmika Kevin Hapuarachchi, Jesse Nasmith, Yahya Amin, Kumar Kapasi, Amanda Catibog, Kalyna Fisher, Riley James Myers, Kessandra Cook
Set in 1996, in a majority-minority neighbourhood in Scarborough, 16-year-old Pooja finds herself torn between her crush on a white boy, and her Brown and Black friends. Her relentless pursuit takes a violent turn, ultimately making her quest for love, a question of self-love.
Saturday, April 3: Woman in Car (Drama) – Canadian premiere
Director: Vanya Rose
Cast: Hélène Joy, Liane Balaban, Gabrielle Lazure, Aidan Ritchie, Anthony Lemke
Anne seems to have it all – sophistication, a house on the hill, an upcoming wedding to the ideal man. But when her stepson returns home with a beautiful woman, Anne develops an obsession with the stranger whom she fears could destroy the privileged life she has built. In a story about a woman who struggles to keep her secrets hidden, Vanya Rose explores issues of class, family, desire and deception. As the countdown to her wedding day winds down, Anne drives head-on into redemption from a life of lies.
Thursday, April 8: Chained (Crime, Thriller) – Toronto premiere
Director: Titus Heckel
Cast: Marlon Kazadi, Aleks Paunovic, Adrian Holmes
An abused and bullied boy discovers and befriends a criminal chained inside an abandoned warehouse, but after a violent betrayal the abused becomes the abuser, putting both their lives in peril.
Friday, April 9: Between Waves (Drama, Sci-Fi) – Toronto premiere
Director: Virginia Abramovich
Cast: Fiona Graham, Luke Robinson, Miguel Damiao, Stacey Bernstein, Sebastian Deery
Even after his presumed death, Jamie continues to be visited by her lover Isaac, a quantum physicist, who pleads for her to join him in a parallel plane. Jamie follows a map and notebook Isaac’s left behind and embarks on a journey to the island of São Miguel in the Azores. At the centre of the Atlantic Ocean, Jamie begins to untangle the truth of what really happened the night Isaac disappeared, learning that she had a greater part in it than she cares to remember. Straddling a fine line between enlightenment and madness, how far will Jamie go before she’s in too deep?
Saturday, April 10: The Last Villains, Mad Dog & the Butcher (Documentary) – Toronto Premiere
Director: Thomas Rinfret
Cast: Paul Vachon, alias “The Butcher”
The Last Villains is the larger-than-life story of the legendary Vachon family of pro wrestlers, as recounted by its only surviving member, Paul “The Butcher” Vachon.
Thursday, April 15: The Corruption of Divine Providence (Drama) – Toronto premiere
Director: Jeremy Torrie
Cast: Ali Skovbye, Elyse Levesque, David La Haye, Corey Sevier, Tantoo Cardinal
This is the story of a sixteen-year-old Métis girl Jeanne. She resides in a small northern town, and one day she mysteriously disappears. When she is found, she is near death and has developed what appears to be stigmata, the wounds that echo those carried by Jesus Christ in his dying moments.
Friday, April 16: Events Transpiring Before, During and After a Highschool Basketball Game (Comedy) – Toronto premiere
Director: Ted Stenson
Cast: Andrew Phung, Benjamin Arthurs, Paul Cowling, Isra Abdelrahim
It’s 1999 and the Middleview Ducks boys’ basketball team are about to play the most low-stakes game of their lives. As the team prepares for another certain loss, the dramas around the game become more of a focus than the score. Locker room conversations about existentialism, an assistant coach’s obsession with an NBA offence technique, organizing a radical theatre protest, and frantically searching for an osteoporosis- stricken canine are just some of the events that take place before, during, and after the high school basketball game.
Saturday, April 17: Range Roads (Drama) – Canadian Premiere
Director: Kyle Thomas
Cast: Alana Hawley Purvis, Joe Perry, Chad Brownlee, Nicole de Boer
When her parents are killed in a sudden car accident, television actor Frankie King returns to her hometown in rural Alberta to face this tragedy after being estranged from her family for 20 years. As she struggles to reconnect with her truculent brother Grayson, old wounds are reopened, and family secrets uncovered.
All Features air at 9 PM ET with Short Film and introduction beforehand.
More details can be found here.
(Photo credit: Canadian Film Fest)
The eighth edition of the Canadian Film Fest takes place in Toronto this weekend. The three-day Event taking place at The Royal in Little Italy, will showcase six Feature Films and 14 Short Films, aiming to celebrate, promote and help advance Canadian Filmmaking.
Festival Executive Director Bern Euler says, “It is an honour to present these films for Toronto audiences to enjoy and celebrate all of the talent in our own backyard.”. Canadian Film Fans will have a chance to connect via Meet-and-Greets with Talent and Workshops also will be held. A highlight of the Festival this year is the Super Channel Script Accelerator Contest, awarding $30,000-$50,000 in pre-licensing as a Grand Prize.
Opening the Festival this year is PATCH TOWN, Director Craig Goodwill’s Feature Debut starring none other than recent Canadian Screen Awards Fan’s Choice Winner Zoie Palmer, Julian Richings, Rob Ramsay and a highly-familiar face in Scott Thompson.
Official Synopsis:
Jon is just another mindless laborer on an assembly line, but at no ordinary factory. Day after day he and his fellow drones Harvest Kids from cabbages – kids that will go on to become the beloved toys of little Boys and Girls in the land outside this dreadful factory. But when Jon discovers an awful secret that he and all the indentured workers are actually grown-up and discarded toys, he’ll have to take on a villainous Corporation to reunite with his long-lost Mother, protect his newfound Family, and finally find freedom.
Watch the Trailer for Patchtown below:
Fans of HBO‘s True Blood will delight at a chance to see THE PRIVILEGED starring Series Star Sam Trammell.
Official Synopsis:
Richard Hunter, a promising young Lawyer at a prestigious Firm, has the perfect future mapped out. However, a costly mistake with a powerful client has put it all at risk. In a desperate attempt to save his job, Richard and his Wife Tara spend the weekend at the Cottage of Senior Partner Preston Westwood. The young Couple is quickly seduced by their charismatic Hosts’ lavish lifestyle but it is clear that something ominous lies just below the surface. After a devastating act of violence reveals that they have become pawns in a blood feud between the Westwoods and a local Family, Richard and Tara must decide what they are willing to sacrifice for success: their morals, their marriage, or their lives.
Watch the Trailer for THE PRIVILEGED below:
Rather intriguing is the hilarious-looking PLAY THE FILM.
Official Synopsis:
When the opening night of a new Play goes horribly awry, the actors are forced to frantically improvise the plot onstage. Clashing egos, tested friendships and a series of disastrous misunderstandings combine to create the most offensive, shocking and accidental piece of theater ever to debut in front of a live Audience.
See the Trailer for PLAY THE FILM:
AFTERPARTY closes the Festival this year, a 30-Something’s Coming-of-Age Drama.
Official Synopsis:
On the night of his brother’s wedding, Best Man Charlie (Graham Coffeng) gets the old Gang back together for a fun-filled, post-reception after party at the Newlyweds’ home where he has been staying for several weeks. Unsure of how to proceed with his own troubled marriage, Charlie reunites “the fellas” fifteen years after High School in hopes that revisiting the past will help him find clarity about his plans for the future. What Charlie finds, however, is that while his friends have all taken different paths, they are all faced with similar conundrums that come with being in their thirties.
See the Trailer below for AFTERPARTY:
Tickets cost a super-reasonable $12.50 and can be purchased here!
The Canadian Film Fest runs Thursday, March 20 through Saturday, March 22, 2014.
(Photo credit: Hideaway Pictures)
Taking place at The Royal Cinema this year, The Canadian Film Fest runs from Wednesday, March 20 through Saturday, March 23, 2013. The Festival celebrates the promotion and advancement of Canadian Talent and included this year are a Filmmaking Master Class with Warren P. Sonoda (Servitude, Textuality) titled Ten Things They Don’t Teach You in Film School.
Screening Friday night is The Disappeared, which comes into the Festival highly-recommended, centering on a group of six Fishermen who become increasingly desperate, surviving on Lifeboats after losing their Vessel.
Click here to see the schedule for the Canadian Film Fest.
(Photo credit: Two Dories Film Inc.)
The Actor has many fond memories of Toronto having filmed many a Movie here in recent years, including Antiviral and also Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D. Although he couldn’t comment on specifics for the latter, he did state “It’s a great scene. I’m not going to tell you too much and spoil it – the Producers are going to kill me – but it’s really fantastic, it’s going to be a great one.”. He adds, “I believe this is my first time being seen in 3-D.”.
For advertising opportunites please contact mrwill@mrwillwong.com