FAI is attending EFM 2023 with a line-up of films in production, post or recently completed or restored seeking SALES AGENTS, DISTRIBUTION and FESTIVALS.

Get in touch with us to set up a meeting in Berlin:
Brigitte Hubmann (bh@film-associates.com) and
Jennifer Price (jp@film-associates.com).

IN POST-PRODUCTION – DOCUMENTARY – THE IMMIGRANT DREAM
LEBANESE BURGER MAFIA
Seeking Sales Agents, Distribution & Festivals

Canada, English, 103 minutes
Writer/Director: Omar Mouallem 
Production Company: Back Road Productions, Canada

The Lebanese Burger Mafia captures the trials and tribulations of Arab immigrants by telling the story of Burger Baron, a rogue fast-food chain likened to the mob. To unearth the mysterious origins of the chain, writer/director Omar Mouallem—himself an heir to a Burger Baron throne—travels across rural Alberta where the institution persists despite the restaurant’s many dysfunctions. He discovers how hundreds of immigrants like his parents spread their trade secrets to uplift their communities, while paradoxically fighting one another for ownership of a company none of them created.

IN PRODUCTION – DOCUMENTARY – ENVIRONMENT
SEND KELP
Seeking Sales Agents

How Seaweed Could Save the World
More info available upon request

Director/Producer: Blake McWilliam (Back Road Productions, Canada)

Frances Wallace is starting a kelp farm. Send Kelp follows the journey of her very first growing season on the water. But to coax a crop from the wild Pacific, she’ll need help from scientists, wild harvesters, and entrepreneurs who know the challenges and astonishing potential of this miraculous organism. This is a story about a bootstrapping seaweed nerd determined to fight climate change and feed the planet too.

Combining incredible underwater cinematography (think, My Octopus Teacher) with a fun, quirky cast of characters, Send Kelp explores important revelations about this game-changing organism and how, with the efforts of entrepreneurs like Frances, it just might help change the world.

COMPLETED – DOCUMENTARY – POLITICAL – IRAN
752 IS NOT A NUMBER
Seeking Distributors, Broadcasters & Festivals

All rights available, excluding Canada
World premiere: TIFF 2022

Canada, English and Farsi, 90 minutes
Writer/Director: Babak Payami
Production Company: Payam Films, Toronto 

752 IS NOT A NUMBER is a harrowing look at one man’s search for justice and a prologue to a much longer story about the fight for lasting change in Iran.

“A portrait of heroism, determination, and unfathomable grief, 752 Is Not A Number is a powerful and deeply personal account from award-winning veteran director Babak Payami (Secret Ballot, Best Director, Venice 2001).” - Steve Gravestock, TIFF

The film chronicles Hamed Esmaeilion’s (he is a dentist from Newmarket) quest for justice and the truth about the tragic downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight ps752 in 2020 by the Iranian military which took the lives of 176 people, including his wife and daughter. With human rights protests raging in Iran, the film is a timely glimpse inside a regime that ignores the fundamental human right to life.

COMPLETED – DEBUT NARRATIVE – ROMANTIC DRAMA
MIDNIGHT AT THE PARADISE
Seeking Sales Agents & Festivals

Canada, English, 94 minutes
Director: Vanessa Matsui
Writer: Bill Robertson
Production Company: Billfilms, Toronto
Key Cast - Liane Balaban, Allan Hawco, Kenneth Welsh 

Over the course of one evening, three couples on a collision course explore what love, death, desire and the magic of movies mean to them.

“a striking script and a stellar cast”  Hollywood North Magazine
“a perfect film for movie lovers”  POV Magazine 

When they were teenagers, Iris (Balaban) and Alex (Hawco) went to see the sexy French New Wave classic 'Breathless' and fell in love. But life had other plans. Twenty years later, Iris is married to workaholic doctor Geoff (Allen), stressed out by motherhood and caring for her dying, self-centered film critic father, Max (Kenneth Welsh). Tonight she has scheduled a screening of 'Breathless' at the rundown Paradise Theater in Max's honor, and on a whim invites Alex. But when Alex shows up with his  fiancée Anthea (Ferreira) in tow, Iris' world is turned upside down and the two ex-lovers spend the evening contemplating the past and plotting a future together.

COMPLETED – THRILLER – DRAMA – TANGO
ARIEL
Seeking Festivals

All rights available
Sales Agent: House of Film, Los Angeles
World Premiere: Goa 2022

Argentina/Canada, English and Spanish, 89 minutes
Writer/Director: Alison Murphy
Production Companies: Cepa Audiovisual, Argentina; Hellhound Productions, Canada
Key Cast - Raphael Grosz-Harvey, Cristina Rosato, Eleonora Wexler,
Cristina Banegas, Gerardo Romano

Against the backdrop of the sexy tango clubs in today’s Buenos Aires, dark family secrets are uncovered that were set in motion in the 1970s when the country’s military dictatorship turned on its own people.

A brother and sister return to the country of their birth, Argentina, for the first time in their adult lives. Against the backdrop of glamorous tango clubs of Buenos Aires, they connect with their past and uncover dark family secrets. On the flight to Buenos Aires, Diana drops the bombshell reason for their return, she believes her brother was adopted. She hopes that helping him discover the truth about his origins might ease his constant emotional suffering and depression. Powerful questions about his identity arise once in Argentina and, while they are both mesmerized by the sumptuous nocturnal world of tango clubs, a storm is brewing which may destroy their family as they know it.

ARIEL draws us into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of thousands of citizens during political upheavals in the 1970’s and 80’s and the grief still felt for the 500 stolen babies of the missing mothers.

1990, Canada, 91 minutes, English
Director/Writer: Patricia Rozema
Key cast – Maurice Godin, Margot Kidder, Kate Nelligan, Sheila McCarthy

All rights available, excluding North America
World premiere: Toronto 1990

From the post-modern mockery of its opening sequence to its tragic-euphoric double ending, White Room, a harrowing urban fairy tale, is as much about the consequences of naive romanticism as it in about our uniquely modern obsession with celebrity.

“A suburban gothic fairy tale, a work of dark, conflicted magic that might have been cut from “Blue Velvet” by Edward Scissorhands.” – The Washington Post

Set in the cultural landscape of bohemian Toronto at the dawn of the ‘90s, Rozema explores the incompatibility of the fragile openness required to create art and the impossibly thick skin needed to sell it to the world.

In this “journey through genres”, White Room centres on would-be writer Norman (Maurice Godin), a directionless soul who, afflicted with writer’s block, takes to wandering the suburban boulevards at night and peeping on his neighbours — especially one “Madeline X” (Margot Kidder) — a famous singer who is murdered one night as the horrified Norman watches, too stunned to intervene. Overcome with guilt, Norman attends her public memorial, where he meets an enigmatic woman (Kate Nelligan) with unexplained connections to Madelaine X. He follows her home to see her slip into a secret room every night.

NEW! 4K RESTORATION
WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING
Seeking Distribution & Festivals

1995, Canada, 94 minutes, English
Director/Writer Director: Patricia Rozema
Key cast – Pascale Bussières, Rachael Crawford, Henry Czerny

All rights available, excluding North America and Germany, Austria, Switzerland (German)
World premiere: Official Competition, Berlin 1995

“Rozema has created a joyous and entirely original portrait of the heavenly
experience of coming out.” – Anne Stockwell, The Advocate

Long considered a pivotal addition to the LGBTQ+ canon, the film centres on the story of Camille (Pascale Bussières), a professor at a Protestant college who is engaged to Martin (Henry Czerny), a respected minister and fellow professor. As “career Christians” they are urged to get married so that they can become co-chaplains of the New College of Faith. When Camille meets Petra (Rachael Crawford), a wry and yet flamboyant performer in a modern Felliniesque circus troupe, she is inexplicably drawn. Camille pursues this sensual, dream-like woman, throwing her whole conservative life, not to mention her engagement, into disarray.

4K RESTORATION
I'VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING
Seeking Distribution & Festivals

1987, Canada, 81 minutes, English
Director/Writer Director: Patricia Rozema
Key Cast – Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, Ann-Marie MacDonald

All rights available, excluding North America and Germany, Austria, Switzerland (German)
World premiere: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Cannes 1987

This film about a waifish daydreamer with artistic aspirations won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival and has since taken its place as a beloved indie classic.

“Gets at solitude, personal and artistic, with comedic surfaces and imaginative fancies that reveal deep currents of anguish: saw and admired it its NY release in 1988 and again now.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“When Polly (Sheila McCarthy), a gauche, ‘organisationally impaired’ temp who indulges in absurdly ethereal daydreams and photography, gets a job at a trendy gallery, she develops a crush on her sophisticated, seemingly imperturbable boss, Gabrielle (Paule Baillargeon), and unwittingly becomes involved in an art fraud. Unlike her protagonist, Rozema never puts a foot wrong. Polly is granted her own subtle dignity, Gabrielle and her lesbian lover transcend conventional villainy, and an allegorical subtext warning against blind faith in false gods is handled so lightly as to be virtually invisible. For all its social satire, however, this is Polly’s film. She is, perhaps, the most memorable, genuinely likeable screen creation in years, and Rozema’s debut — touching, hilarious, as fresh as a summer breeze — does her ample justice.” – Time Out