Two Canadian documentaries are among the films getting a boost at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Canada receives the focus of the First Look section, a national spotlight in the Swiss festival. Six films will screen in the competition in addition to Canadian titles playing elsewhere in the festival. Run in partnership with Telefilm Canada, the films in First Look are titles in post-production and are selected with hopes that the showcase will increase their sales potential and viability on the festival circuit.
Docs in the First Look series include the Quebec production Lhasa, directed by Sophie Leblond. The film offers a portrait of Canadian folk singer Lhasa de Sela, who passed away in 2010 at age 37. The film is Leblond’s feature directorial debut after editing docs like Alexander’s Odyssey, for which she won a Canadian Screen Award, and St. Henry, the 26th of August. Lhasa is produced by Metafilm’s Sylvain Corbeil and Audrey-Ann Dupuis-Pierre.
Also hailing from Quebec is Catherine Hébert and Elric Robichon’s doc We Will Not Be Silenced. The film explores the plights of writers and publishers in exile who use their words to craft stories of resistance. The film is Robichon’s feature directorial debut, while Hébert has helmed docs including Ziva Postec: The Editor Behind Shoah. We Will Not Be Silenced is produced by Films Camera Obscura.
“Canada makes a powerful mark at Locarno with eight films in selection, one prestigious award and six promising teams in First Look — a record-breaking celebration of Canadian talent!” said Julie Roy, Executive Director and CEO of Telefilm Canada, in a statement. “Locarno has long championed Canadian voices like Denis Côté, Trevor Anderson and Matthew Rankin, and this year reaffirms Canada’s growing impact on global cinema. Our expanding international collaborations and audience markets not only reflect the strength of our storytelling today but also lay a strong foundation for the next generation of storytellers to thrive on the world stage.”
Rounding out the First Look contingent are the fiction films Nina Roza by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles, Raymond St-Jean’s Veins, Bryce Hodgson’s Thanks to the Hard Work of the Elephants, and Nick Butler’s Lunar Sway.
Other Canadian films screening at Locarno include Sophy Romvari’s feature debut Blue Heron and Éric K. Boulianne’s first feature Folichonneries. Both films will screen in the Filmmakers of the Present competition. Shorts in competition include Ryan McKenna’s Solitudes, Alexandre Dostie’s BOA, and Jean-Sébastien Hamel and Alexandra Myotte’s Ce qu’on laisse derrière (What We Leave Behind).
An international jury will award several prizes to support post-production and marketing. The jurors are Franck Finance-Madureira, film critic and President/Founder of the Queer Palm at Cannes and the Queer Palm Lab; Kim Yutani, Director of Programming at Sundance Film Festival, and Jacqueline Lyanga, Co-Director of Film Programming at Berlin International Film Festival.
