Canadians at Cannes: buyer$ and seller$.

THE IMPACT of war, the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks and SARS-reduced attendance on Cannes 2003 was far from catastrophic, but festival regulars noticed it. The crowds shrank a little, the best restaurants in town were easier to get into and on balmy evenings, Living Legends got exposed to less frenzy than usual as they ascended the red-carpeted stairway of the Palais.

This does not mean that the fans passed on the outdoor ceremony that precedes gala screenings on the carpet. "Nicole!" they shouted at the star whose sparkle dazzles everyone from megaplex rats to auteurs like Lars von Trier. Kidman plays the lead in Doqville, the Danish director's hyper-theatrical hate message to America, the film that was supposed to win the Palme d'Or until Denys Arcand's Les Invasions barbares became a serious contender and Gus Van Sant's Elephant emerged as the surprise winner. Beyond the Official Competition, Cannes paid homage to cinema's purest heart with events like a Fellini retrospective and a stunning exhibition of photos highlighting Jean Cocteau's appearances at the festival.

For the Canadians at Cannes, the festival unspooled at a moment that no doubt made it easier to resist the Riviera's many temptations and focus on the work at hand. Back home, the industry had been shaken by a series of upheavals and crises like The Incredible Expanding Loonie that, according to many alarmed players, would stomp all over lucrative foreign production. As for the Canadian Television Fund debacle, some agonized that it pointed toward a future of slow starvation and began wondering if they should, after years of resisting the call of Hollywood, rethink their position. The sense of uncertainty was elevated by loose lips in Ottawa blurting out that the film and television industry has reached such a level of maturity, maybe it could survive without assistance from taxpayers. As Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm's Patrick Roy put it to me in Cannes, "I hope what I'm seeing in the Television Fund won't happen with movies. We're starting to do well with them."

Despite all the items on their worry agenda, the Canadian buyers and sellers I spoke to in Cannes cheerfully went about their business in hotel suites, apartments rented on side streets off the Croisette, restaurants facing the Old Port and the Canada Pavilion. On second thought, maybe they didn't resist all those temptations. Or maybe Canada's high-profile at the festival, the support system offered by Telefilm and a confidence in their own know-how gave them lift and momentum. After all, Canadians have been playing the Cannes game since 1946 and are skilled at navigating the humongous event that draws thousands of participants, all of them living their own version of it.

For Yves Dion, vice-president of distribution at Equinoxe Films, Cannes was mostly about the No. 1 item on his company's slate, Emile Gaudreault's Mambo Italiano. After selling well at the American Film Market and then being guaranteed U.S. distribution by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, the picture opened in Quebec on 100 screens, earning over $2 million between its June release and late July. Dion told me Equinoxe was eagerly anticipating the Canada-wide and American launches of Mambo, following a gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival. Test screenings have indicated that the movie will play well, and Goldwyn president Meyer Gottlieb believes in the picture's good-natured comedy. When I met Dion in Equinoxe's airy office, he said that sales of the film were up to about 22 countries, counting the business he and associate Lina Marrone had done in Cannes. Mambo's budget was covered and the market still had a few days to go. "We'll probably sell the rest of the world in Toronto," he forecast, offering me a Mambo T-shirt.

The enthusiastic vice-president, once the right-hand man of legendary Quebec producer and distributor Rene Malo, joined Equinoxe just before the company skyrocketed into distribution heaven with the Canadian release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Despite this phenomenal success, the firm, which derives from Canada's oldest distribution company, France Films, has relatively modest goals. "We don't want to release 40 pictures a year," Dion explained. "We will acquire about 10 that we fall in love with and give them a good distribution pattern." For the moment, Equinoxe is smitten by comedies and its upcoming releases include Martin Short's Jiminy Glick movie, La La Wood.

Mambo Italiano, the first English-language film made under Telefilm Canada's new audience-driven policy, exemplifies the kind of serious prints and advertising commitment the funding agency is asking distributors to make. Dion, like many of his colleagues, has faith in the new paradigm Richard Stursberg is promoting. "I'm not saying Canadian films were boring, but we made a lot that made nothing at the box office. I think we'll have a better balance between commercial films and art films." Dion has one recommendation: money that's cut from any particular fund as a result of poor performance should be "transferred into the marketing fund because this is what we need, big time. If Telefilm wants to increase the box office on Canadian films, we agree. But if you don't have marketing money, it's very hard."

A few blocks away from Dion's office, long-time Alliance Atlantis executive Charlotte Mickie sat in hers, agreeing with the Equinoxe vice-president's positive take on the new Telefilm policy. However, although Mickie works for one of the country's biggest media conglomerates, she defended the value of art that is at least partly for art's sake. "For a long time there was this feeling that Canadian movies should be more commercial, but I think we should congratulate ourselves on how well received Canadian films are at festivals like Cannes, and how this leads to international distribution and great reviews everywhere. I think we never publicize this enough in Canada. We have never patted ourselves on the back enough." Mickie believes that the industry needs more audience-friendly moviemaking "for political reasons if nothing else," but she also "hopes there will be some efforts made not to throw out the baby with the bath water."

As managing director of the Alliance Atlantis Entertainment Group's international sales division, Mickie took her Cannes meetings at "half-hour intervals, or when it's really heavy, every 15 minutes." Sometimes a film is so hot, people line up on the stairs. Mickie recalled that one year at Cannes she worried about the fate of a corpulent European distributor who got packed into a sweltering, stinky theatre on rue d'Antibes to watch an Alliance offering. "He came back to my office after the screening and told me that I had to close the door." Expecting anything, she was relieved when "he offered me so much money, I was horrified and thrilled and we did a deal right away." Mickie was doing "quite well" at the festival but in no way were sales comparable to last year. "We had Bowling for Columbine and it was an extraordinary phenomenon." (To date Michael Moore's anti-gun documentary has earned $50 million US worldwide.) This year, the Alliance Atlantis lineup featured some Canadian highlights such as Lea Pool's The Blue Butterfly, William Phillips's Foolproof and Charles Biname's Seraphin: Heart of Stone, and U.S. pictures including Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent and Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity (both Sundance Festival winners).

At Cannes, one of the pictures Mickie acquired was a Canada-U.K. co-production called That Touch of Pink. To generate pre-sales on it (the movie was still in production), Mickie showed footage to prospective buyers, many of whom immediately wanted to read the script. Written and directed by Ian Rashid, the film, said Mickie, is "for a rather sophisticated audience. It's about a gay Indian guy in England who has internalized the character of Cary Grant," and communes with the Hollywood icon of debonair charm. "It's a bit of Play It Again, Sam, a bit of Cage oux folles, a bit of My Big Fat Gay Indian Wedding in Toronto," she joked.

Astral Media, which tags itself a "pure play" media company, was one of the first serious backers of the Canadian film and television production industry. Michelle Marion, the director of Canadian Independent Production for Astral's The Movie Network, commissions, pre-licenses and invests in films and television series. On the deck of the Canada Pavilion, she told me she was in Cannes to "celebrate the projects that we've been involved with. It's exciting to see them coming into the world." Among other pictures, Astral played a role in Mambo Italiano, Les Invasions barbares and Wiebke von Carolsfeld's Marion Bridge, which screened in the market.

Marion said she was also at the festival "to have face-to-face meetings with provincial and European co-production funders. As things become more difficult to finance, and public funding is tenuous at the moment, I'm looking for other ways to help." A supporter of Telefilm's new paradigm, Marion rejects the idea that wanting to please viewers is an abdication of creativity. "Your story can hit certain points that an audience needs without selling out your vision. It's about finding the right balance, which doesn't mean giving up uniqueness, originality and freshness if that is what is going to make your film work. We're happy to get behind key pictures with more money, larger licenses and larger investments." But Marion also thinks there must be a place for small, perhaps less commercial pictures. "Interesting, valuable stories still exist at that budget level."

On the terrace of a cafe near the Majestic hotel, Jeff Sackman, CEO and president of the hot new distribution company, ThinkFilm, also talked about the policy shifts at Telefilm. Affable and relaxed, Sackman told me, "It's extraordinarily refreshing to have Stursberg, who has a business head, at the helm. Last year in Cannes, when he was introduced to the community, they were slinging arrows at him." A year later, Sackman points out, attitudes have changed drastically. "From the conversations I have had with people, the policy seems to create a consensus of support. We must deliver films that actually appeal to audiences. The rest is just chatter."

Sackman, former president of Lions Gate Films where he executive produced hot-button pictures like American Psycho, emphasized that ThinkFilm is a North American distributor with a well-staffed New York City office. This positioning reflects an opposition to parochial attitudes restricting scope of operation, and it's also a response to a Canadian distribution industry dominated by a single powerful company, Alliance Atlantis. "One area where I differ from the Telefilm policies," Sackman contended, "is that they seem very limited to Canada. It's worthwhile to have a goal, but the goal should be five per cent of the box office within a context of reason, If we can make Canadian films that appeal to the U.S. box office before being released at home, there's nothing wrong with that. If a film works in the States, it has a much better chance of working in Canada. There's nothing wrong with a movie funded by Telefilm going out and grossing $4 million in the United States."

As for ThinkFilm's Cannes schedule, four people from the outfit "screened movies day and night. And the odds are pretty good that I won't see the inside of a theatre because I'm taking meetings morning to night. Our mandate is to find films for North America. And if North America's not available, we'll find films for the U.S. only." As for content, "We'll handle the films the studios can't. And there's a couple here that might fit that bill. But Miramax, New Line and Sony Classics are all going to be there, looking as eager as us."

Distributor of the crowd-pleasing, Oscar-nominated documentary, Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound, Peter O'Brian's Hollywood North and Sudz Sutherland's Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (both of which will have their Canadian debut at TIFF), ThinkFilm will also release Norman Jewison's picture, The Statement, which is being co-produced by Sackman's new partner, Robert Lantos. Naturally, Sackman grins, people are curious about how the Lantos relationship is working out because "there are personalities involved. So far it couldn't be better. He's the No. 1 guy who's ever played the game in Canada. Bringing Robert in will accelerate growth, the activity level and profile of the company. The deal is that he's the chairman and not involved in day-to-day details, If that's what he wanted, he would have stayed at Alliance." Sackman could have been talking about the entire Canadian industry when he said from his vantage point at Cannes 2003, "It's always interesting, the great unknown about the future. But we're very excited. I think we're very well-positioned to make our mark."