Cannes does CanCon
Canadian filmmakers well represented
It’s a rare Cannes festival that doesn’t include some Canadian talent. Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Denis Villeneuve and of course Xavier Dolan are all fixtures here. And while none of those big names is in competition this year, it doesn’t take much scratching to find some lesser-known Canucks in the larger lineup.
Take Matthew Rankin, whose short film The Tesla World Light is playing in the Critics Week sidebar. The 36-year-old filmmaker is Winnipeg-born and Quebec-based. “Two places that have a national cinema,” he says of their strong regional voices. “As a Winnipegger, I feel very close to Quebec cinema. Both have a coherent set of obsessions and cultural references.”
Rankin’s eight-minute film, which imagines Nikola Tesla’s plea for funding from financier J.P. Morgan in the last century, has an old-fashioned, handmade look that will be familiar to fans of fellow ’Pegger Guy Maddin. (It really is handmade, too: “Some of my best friends are computers,” Rankin says, “but I don’t like to make films with them so much.”)
Cultural identity is also on the minds of Philippe David Gagné and Jean-Marc E. Roy, co-directors of Crème de Menthe, which tells the story of a woman (Charlotte Aubin) cleaning out her deceased father’s house, looking for some evidence of their relationship amid the clutter. The two men met in 2002 while attending university in Quebec’s Saguenay region northeast of Montreal, and are keen to tell stories from that distinct region.
“This is our cinema,” says Roy. “The accents, the scenery, everything.” Adds Gagné: “By being the most particular, you can be the most universal. We think that our reality can resonate with people around the world.”
Representing an Anglo accent is Manitoba-born, Toronto-based filmmaker Kyle Sanderson, producer of the short film Möbius, which like Tesla is screening as part of Critics Week. The 15-minute film, in which a high school student ponders her missing boyfriend, was shot in and around Toronto by director Sam Kuhn — a U.S. director, but one with a real affinity for Canada, Sanderson says.
All these Canadian filmmakers have longer projects in the works or at least in their heads. And all are adamant that exposure in a festival like Cannes can drive one’s career to the next level.