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Toronto director's 1st film to debut at Sundance

04.12.2008 16:01 Arts - Source: cbc.ca

A scene from Nollywood Babylon, a documentary about the Nigerian film industry. (Samir Mallal/NFB)

Toronto writer David Bezmozgis's debut feature film Victoria Day is to have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

The Sundance Film Festival, the most important U.S. forum for independent films, announced a slate of films in competition on Wednesday.

Victoria Day, a coming-of-age story based on one of Bezmozgis's acclaimed short stories, will compete in the world cinema dramatic competition.

Two other Canadian movies — Nollywood Babylon and Prom Night in Mississippi — appear in the world cinema documentary competition.

Before Tomorrow, a debut feature from directors Marie-Hlne Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, also will screen in the world dramatic feature competition.

Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, makers of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), are the executive producers of the film, which tells the story of an Inuit family in their first contact with Europeans.

Montreal-based Cousineau and Inuit elder Ivalu also screened the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Victoria Day tells the story of a week in the life of a teenaged boy in May 1988 in which he gets caught up in the search for a missing boy, has a romance with the boy's sister, follows the Stanley Cup finals and participates in a peculiar Vietnam reenactment with Victoria Day firecrackers.

Bezmozgis, whose Natasha and Other Stories was chosen for Canada Reads, completed a director's and screenwriter's lab for Victoria Day at the Sundance Institute in 2006.

Nollywood Babylon, a feature documentary about the popularity of Nigeria's film industry, is directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal.

It is the third documentary collaboration for Addelman and Mallel, who met at the National Film Board in Montreal. They investigate Nigeria's brash, inventive B-movie culture and its films combining voodoo, magic and urban storylines.

Nollywood Babylon previously screened at Festival du Nouveau Cinma In Montreal.

Emmy-winning Canadian director Paul Saltzman is creator of Prom Night in Mississippi, which tells the story of Charleston High School's first integrated prom. Actor Morgan Freeman had made a long-standing offer that he would pay for prom night if the school created a prom for black and white students together and the school finally took him up on it.

The world documentary competition has 16 entries including:

Afghan Star: director Havana Marking follows four singers risking their lives to compete in the Afghanistan version of American Idol.
Thriller in Manila: about the 1975 heavyweight match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, one of the most bitter sporting rivalries ever, chronicled by British director John Dower.
Burma VJ: Danish filmmaker Anders Oestergaard looks at the Saffron Revolution, the September 2007 uprising in Burma and how journalists there risked going to prison to send pocket-camera images to the rest of the world.

The feature competition includes buzzed about film Paper Heart in which director Nicolas Jasenovec follows the real-life romance of comedian Charlene Yi and Canadian actor Michael Cera.

A film adapted from a novel by late writer David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in September, has been created by writer-director John Krasinski, the actor who plays the mild-mannered Jim on NBC's The Office.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is about a woman played by Julianne Nicholson who dissects her breakup by talking to other men about their bad behaviour.

Also on the drama lineup:

Cold Souls: directed and written by Sophie Barthes and starring Paul Giamatti as a fading actor.
The Greatest: written and directed by Shana Feste and starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon as a couple who have lost their son.
Peter and Vandy: a romance written and directed by Jay DiPietro and starring Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler.
Push: writer-director Lee Daniels's film about a Harlem girl inspired by her teacher, starring Paula Patton, comedian Mo'Nique and rocker Lenny Kravitz.

The Sundance Film Festival runs Jan. 15-25 in Park City, Utah.

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