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Telefilm Canada funds the production of 13 French-language films for more than $11 million

21 October 2015

Starring, among others, Suzanne Clément, Marie-Josée Croze, Roy Dupuis, Louis-José Houde as well as Paul Doucet, Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge and Patrice Robitaille in the sequel to Les 3 p’tits cochons 

Montreal, October 21, 2015—Telefilm Canada announces its latest fiscal 2015-2016 funding decisions for French-language films. Through the Canada Feature Film Fund, Telefilm is supporting the production of 13 projects for a total of more than $11 million. The funded films are: Ça sent la coupe (Patrice Sauvé), Dérive (David Uloth), Embrasse-moi comme tu m’aimes (André Forcier), Iqaluit (Benoît Pilon), Les 3 p’tits cochons 2 (Jean-François Pouliot), Louise en hiver (Jean-François Laguionie), Miséricorde (Fulvio Bernasconi), Nelly (Anne Émond), Origami (Patrick Demers), Pays (Chloé Robichaud), Père fils thérapie (Émile Gaudreault), Squat (Jacques Laberge) and Un jour mon prince (Flavia Coste).

Telefilm’s most recent funding decisions for French-language projects were announced on May 6 and March 12, 2015.

Films in pre-production

Ça sent la coupe
Screenwriter: Matthieu Simard
Director: Patrice Sauvé (Cheech)
Production: Les Films Outsiders
Distribution: Les Films Séville
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Louis-José Houde (De père en flic)
Release: 2017

Ça sent la coupe is a dramatic comedy starring Louis-José Houde as 30-something Max, whose life is turned upside down when his girlfriend suddenly leaves him. When not playing ball hockey or working at a store selling hockey cards—a business he inherited—Max embarks on a new path of self-discovery, not always choosing the quickest or easiest route. Directed by Patrice Sauvé and written by Matthieu Simard, Ça sent la coupe is a tender and heartwarming production imbued with love for Quebec’s national sport.

Dérive
Screenwriter: Chloé Cinq-Mars
Director: David Uloth
Production: Productions l’Unité centrale
Distribution: Axia Films
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Suzanne Clément (Mommy), Marc Béland, Emmanuel Schwartz
Release: Fall 2017

Eleven-year-old Marine is trying to get over her father’s death a year earlier. When she starts her first year of high school, she quickly becomes a target because of her originality. Océane, her older sister, finds solace with her first boyfriend, an actor who is 10 years older. Their mother Catherine, for her part, is too preoccupied with financial problems—her husband’s legacy—to notice anything at all. So Marine withdraws into an imaginary world where she finds comfort with her father.

Miséricorde (minority Canada-Switzerland coproduction)
Director: Fulvio Bernasconi
Screenwriters: Fulvio Bernasconi, Antoine Jaccoud
Production: 1976 Productions, Point Prod Fiction
Distribution: Filmoption International
Genre: Mystery, crime drama, detective story
Confirmed talent: Jonathan Zaccai, Évelyne Brochu (Inch’Allah)
Release: Spring/summer 2016

Thomas, a Swiss cop now living in Quebec, wants to see justice done. So he sets off alone, across northern Quebec, in pursuit of a trucker who killed a young Native woman’s son. Thomas’s search for justice is also motivated by other reasons: a few months earlier, he had accidently killed his own son.

Origami
Director: Patrick Demers
Screenwriter: Claude Lalonde, André Gulluni
Production: Les Productions Kinesis
Distribution: Filmoption International
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: François Arnaud (The Borgias)
Release: 2017

David is travelling. He’s on a unique trip that doesn’t take him from one place to another but from one moment in time to another. Seeking to understand the strange power he has to move around in his own timeline, David gradually becomes aware of his psychotic state. Eventually, he has to confront the disassembled chronology of his own life as well as his repressed past.

Squat
Director: Samuel Matteau
Screenwriter: Guillaume Fournier (loosely based on a screenplay by Jacques Laberge, which itself is based on Paul Rousseau’s novel Haine-moi!)
Production: Vélocité Productions
Distribution: K-Films Amérique
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Théodore Chouinard-Pellerin (30 vies), Noah Parker

The appealing story of TV—Thierry Vézina—which starts on the evening he decides to run away from his comfortable home in a Quebec City suburb to save his best friend, Samu—Samuel Bernard. The 15-year-olds soon find that their escapade has turned into a frantic flight from cops and adults. The boys’ friendship is put to the test when they meet up with a group of squatters in Quebec’s Old Town. The transition from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love for the first time, discovering freedom and learning how to survive on the street…their path isn’t always very smooth.

Films in production

Les 3 p’tits cochons 2
Director: Jean-François Pouliot (La grande séduction)
Screenwriters: Claude Lalonde, Pierre Lamothe
Production: Christal Films Productions, Bloom Films 1998
Distribution: Les Films Christal
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Paul Doucet (Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre), Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge (Nitro Rush), Patrice Robitaille (Québec-Montréal), Sophie Prégent (Piché: entre ciel et terre), Isabel Richer (Babine)
Release: Summer 2016

We catch up with the three little pigs, still in thrall to their unbridled libidos, five years later.

Iqaluit
Director: Benoît Pilon (Ce qu’il faut pour vivre)
Screenwriters: Benoît Pilon, Ian Lauzon
Production: Association coopérative de productions audiovisuelles (ACPAV)
Distribution: Les Films Séville
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Marie-Josée Croze (Les Invasions barbares), François Papineau (Route 132, Natar Ungalaaq, Christine Tootoo, Paul Arakariaq, Sébastien Huberdeau, Annie Neevee-Buschemi, Ulipika Irngaut, Kaalinnguat Peter, Simon Nattaq, Peter-Henry Arnatsiq, Matt Holland, Ellen David
Release: 2016

Carmen, an active and independent Montrealer, travels to Iqaluit to be at the bedside of her husband, Gilles, who was seriously injured while working in the North. After his death, Carmen decides to stay in Iqaluit to find out what happened. She begins to learn about a part of the country that is completely foreign to her—and also about her husband’s secret life. Her well-ordered world begins to fall apart. In trying to unravel the true from the false, despite her grief and pain, Carmen eventually looks truth in the eye and takes a first step on the path to healing. She gets closer to Noah, Gilles’ Inuit friend. And when Carmen’s drama also becomes Noah’s, the two set off across Frobisher Bay: Carmen to find the answers she seeks, Noah to prevent his son from committing an act that can never be undone.

Louise en hiver (minority Canada-France coproduction)
Director: Jean-François Laguionie
Screenwriter: Jean-François Laguionie
Production: Productions l’Unité centrale, JPL Films
Distribution: Axia Films
Genre: Animation
Confirmed talent (voice): Dominique Frot
Release: Spring 2016

On the last day of summer, an old woman notices that the last train has left without her. She finds herself alone in a little seaside resort, abandonned by all. What happened?… The weather quickly turns bad, the high tides batter the coast. A delicate and stylish woman, less well-equipped even than Robinson Crusoe to handle being alone, she shouldn’t survive the winter. So Louise begins to consider being left behind as a kind of wager. She will survive by confronting the elements—as well as the memories that soon begin to make their presence felt…

Nelly
Director: Anne Émond (Les êtres chers)
Screenwriter: Anne Émond
Production: Go Films
Distribution: Les Films Séville
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Mylène Mackay (Endorphine), Mylia Corbeil-Gauvreau, Mickaël Gouin, Sylvie Drapeau, Catherine Brunet, Rémi-Pierre Paquin
Release: 2016

A film loosely based on the life and work of Quebec writer Nelly Arcand. The portrait of a woman with competing personas, lost among her conflicting identities as writer, lover, whore and star. Several women in the body of one woman, caught between moments of great joy and feelings of profound disillusion. A film that reflects a life of violence and radical work; a tribute to a writer whose work is dense, chilling and necessary. 

Pays
Director: Chloé Robichaud (Sarah préfère la course)
Screenwriter: Chloé Robichaud
Production: La Boîte à Fanny, Item 7
Distribution: Les Films Séville
Genre: Drama
Confirmed talent: Emily VanCamp (Revenge), Nathalie Doummar, Macha Grenon (Familia), Yves Jacques, Alexandre Landry (Gabrielle), Serge Houde, Sophie Faucher, Rémy Girard (Les Invasions barbares)

Félixe, 25, never imagined that she would actually be elected when she decided to become a candidate in her riding and run in the federal elections. She suddenly finds herself included in a Canadian delegation to Besco, an island facing severe financial problems, for talks on development of the island’s mining industry. The talks are headed by Émilie, a renowned mediator, who is in the midst of a difficult divorce. Also involved is Danielle, President of Besco, who must manage the situation while trying to maintain her family life. During the week-long mediation process, the three women discover that, beyond the issues of politics and land, they also have a lot in common.

Père fils thérapie (based on the hit movie De père en flic)
Director: Émile Gaudreault (Mambo Italiano)
Screenwriters: Philippe de Chauveron, Guy Laurent, Émile Gaudreault
Production: Cinémaginaire, Incognita Films
Distribution: Les Films Séville
Genre: Comedy
Confirmed talent: Richard Berry (Le petit prince a dit), Waly Dia, Rachid Badouri, Manuel Tadros, Patrice Coquereau, Charles-Alexandre Dubé, Yves Jacques (Le Déclin de l’empire américain)
Release: Summer 2016

Jacques and his son Marc are both cops who can’t stand each other—but who have to work together. Their mission: rescue a colleague who has been kidnapped by criminals. The key to the mission’s success lies with the kidnappers’ lawyer, Charles Perronet. But getting to Perronet is impossible. In an attempt to get close to the lawyer, Jacques and Marc take part in a father/son therapy activity held in the woods. Will they be able to win Perronet’s trust and get him to tell them everything he knows?

Films in post-production

Embrasse-moi comme tu m’aimes
Director: André Forcier (Coteau rouge)
Screenwriters: André Forcier, Linda Pinet
Production: Les Films du Paria
Distribution: Filmoption International
Genre: Romantic comedy
Confirmed talent: Émile Schneider, Juliette Gosselin, Céline Bonnier (Monica la mitraille), Mylène Mackay, Réal Bossé, Tony Nardi, Luca Asselin, Catherine de Léan, Patrick Drolet, Antoine Bertrand (Louis Cyr: l’homme le plus fort du monde), Roy Dupuis (Maurice Richard), Alexandre Castonguay, Rémy Girard, Julien Poulin (Elvis Gratton), Marc Hervieux, France Castel, Pascale Desrochers, Émi Chicoine, Raphaël Lacaille, Pier-Luc Funk, Christine Beaulieu, Anick Lemay, Stéphane Crète, Geneviève Schmidt, Sonia Vachon, Donald Pilon, Denys Arcand, Benoît Brière, Stéphane L’Écuyer, Mylène St-Sauveur
Release: 2016

1940. Pierre would be fighting at the front if not for his invalid—and breathtakingly beautiful—sister, Berthe. She tries everything to seduce him. Pierre wants to love a “real” woman, but Berthe’s fantasy is unyielding.

Un jour mon prince (minority Canada-France coproduction)
Director: Flavia Coste
Screenwriters: Flavia Coste, Gabor Rassov
Production: Christal Films Productions, MACT Productions
Distribution: Les Films Christal
Genre: Romantic comedy
Confirmed talent: Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse (Piché: entre ciel et terre), Mylène St-Sauveur (Familia)
Release: 2016

Two Quebec fairies are sent to Paris, City of Love, to find a prince who can awaken Sleeping Beauty.

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Media enquiries:
Douglas Chow, Head, Public Relations, Telefilm Canada
(416) 973-6436 ext. 2548 or 1-800-463-4607
douglas.chow@telefilm.ca