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Exclusive: Canadian outfit Marina Cordoni Entertainment is taking the title to the Efm.

Toronto’s Marina Cordoni Entertainment is in Berlin with the world market premiere of the Butler Brothers’ heist comedy First Round Down.

The feature centres on the misadventures of a former ice hockey prodigy. Dylan Bruce plays the lead as a former athlete and hitman on the straight and narrow who returns home to care for his younger brother and finds his chequered past catching up with him. Rachel Wilson and Rob Ramsay also star.

Substance Productions produced First Round Down in association with Marina Cordoni Entertainment, Telefilm Canada and Unobstructed View.

Cordoni has just licensed worldwide rights excluding Canada on Gail Harvey’s upcoming thriller Never Saw It Coming to Jay Firestone’s Prodigy Pictures. Katie Boland stars in the film, which is set to begin shooting on March 23.

The Efm sales slate includes Connor Gaston’s drama The Devout, Adam Garnet Jones’s Toronto...

The Canada-Ireland co-productions were among the highlights of the past year as the organisation used its annual public assembly on Wednesday to look back at some of its accomplishments.

Attendees – a mix of invited members of the public and professionals from Canada’s audiovisual industry – heard how in 2015-2016 Telefilm Canada supported the production of 110 and the marketing of 105 features and the development of 258 projects.

Heading into its 50th anniversary year in 2017, the organisation helped promote Canadian talent at 42 festivals and 102 events and initiatives across the country and at 34 festivals, markets and events around the world for a total investment of $95.7m.

2015-2016 marked Telefilm’s 40th anniversary in co-production management. In 2015, total production budgets for 53 film and television treaty co-production projects amounted to $447m and involved 15 partner countries.

Canada and Ireland signed a new treaty in 2016 and partnered recently on Brooklyn and Room (pictured). Both earned best picture Oscar nominations, marking the first...

Canadian film-maker Connor Gaston’s first feature recently garnered seven Leo Awards in Vancouver honouring the best in British Columbian film, TV and web content.

Marina Cordoni Entertainment (McE) will handle world sales on The Devout, about a man whose faith is tested when he begins to believe his terminally ill child was an Apollo astronaut in a previous life.

Charlie Carrick, Ali Liebert, Gabrielle Rose and David Nykl star alongside four-year old newcomer Olivia Martin. Amanda Verhagen and Gaston produced and Daniel Hogg serve as executive producer.

The Devout has played at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Busan in South Korea,...

The Devout

Written and directed by Connor Gaston

Canada, 2015

A film which tugs on heartstrings like a puppeteer, The Devout is an emotionally resonant film which doesn’t fully connect its script with the finished product. Set in the bible belt of British Columbia, the narrative is nestled around a Christian teacher, Darryl, his wife Jan, and their daughter Abigail, who is dying of cancer.

By itself, The Devout’s exploration of family dynamics amidst a slowly unfurling tragedy is compelling cinema. Shot with wide lenses and a muted grey complexion, images of Darryl and Jan slide between heartbroken tears to putting on a happy face for the four-year-old Abigail. With a warm chemistry between the family members, and a deft hand from Gaston guiding them, their interactions – breakfasts, stories, setting off fireworks at magic hour – become the highlight of the film. Alas, they should also be its bedrock; but...

The luxurious banquet hall in Toronto’s Royal York hotel was electric with excitement as Tiff senior programmers including Steve Gravestock and Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo announced the robust lineup of Canadian films (several world preems) at this year’s Tiff plus the 40+ short titles (out of an astounding 840 short films — an increase of over 200 titles from last year) that will screen at the prestigious festival. With features populating almost every section at the fest, among the headliner items from English Canada, Cairo Time‘s Ruba Nadda returns to the fest with October Gale, while also world preeming is Bang Bang Baby — Jeffrey St. Jules marks his feature film debut with a film that is equal parts Rocky Horror Picture Show and early Cronenberg. Starring Jane Levy of the recent About Alex, it revolves around a small-town teenager in the ’60s whose dream of becoming a famous singer is dashed...

With all the buzz around world premieres and gala events happening at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s easy to forget there is also a pretty stellar shorts program in the mix. Consisting of work spanning all genres, the format is a great way to experience new, upcoming talent as well as to check up on a couple familiar faces too. The following is a collection of capsule reviews and scores for each short in their respective screening blocks.

—Programme 1

Bardo Light – 10 minutes

What do you get when you mix the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the ancient metallurgical science of alchemy, and the namesake of inventor Philo Farnsworth? The answer is Connor Gaston‘s short film Bardo Light—titled for the bright glow none of us can avoid at the end of our lives.

Told via the police interrogation of the younger Farnsworth (Shaan Rahman) after his adopted...