CHECK OUT THE LINE-UP
From fresh new films in post and market premieres to festival gems and
4K restorations of indie and queer classics.

ATTENDING:
Brigitte Hubmann bh@film-associates.com
Jennifer Price jp@film-associates.com

THE BURNING SEASON
ROMANTIC DRAMA | MYSTERY

Seeking Sales Agents, Distribution & Festivals
All rights available except Canada (Northen Banner Releasing)

2023, Canada, 89 minutes, English
Director: Sean Garrity (The End of Sex, TIFF 2022)
Key cast: Sara Canning and Jonas Chernick

Borsos Award for Best Screenplay (Whistler Film Festival, 2023)
Best Male Supporting Actor (Nomination - Vancouver Film Critics Circle, 2024)
Glasgow Film Festival 2024

Alena and JB get entangled in a secret affair. Summers only. That's the rule. Until they break it. A tragic love story-told backwards.

Alena and Tom arrive at Luna Lake for JB and Poppy’s wedding. The night implodes when JB’s secret affair with Alena is finally exposed. THE BURNING SEASON begins at the end, then takes us backwards, each previous summer revealing progressively deeper insight into their mysteriously intense connection. The story unfolds like a conundrum, challenging our preconceived ideas, tracking the affair over eight summers, and culminating in a surprising revelation that recontextualizes everything we thought we knew...

BROMANTIC COMEDY | ASIAN AMERICAN | COMING OF AGE | LGBTQ+

Seeking Sales Agents, Distribution & Festivals
All rights available

During their final weekend together, two best friends test the limits of their friendship while making a double-meta film.

Ryan and Daniel, two childhood best friends and aspiring actors, spend one final weekend together before Ryan moves to Canada with his fiance. Wanting to create one lasting memory, they decide to make a movie... about two guys making a movie... about two guys making a movie. Along the way, bottled-up secrets arise as they unpack their decades-long friendship and put their extremely unique dynamic to the test.

DOCUMENTARY | LGBTQ+ | SOCIAL ISSUES

Seeking Sales Agents, Distribution & Festivals
All rights available except Canada (OutTV) 

2024, Canada, 98 minutes, English
Director: Colette Vosberg

Seven women, three generations, one family and countless secrets and lies.
Meet Canada’s Gayest Family.

UNUSUALLY NORMAL spans three eras of women in one family household—the youngest, Madison Ford, draws a family tree with two grandmothers and four mothers. This documentary builds on intimate family videos, photographs, archival footage and social media postings (their Tik Tok account boasts 200,000 followers) to reflect LGBTQ+ stories from the ‘40s until present day. Through very personal accounts, the film explores family rejection, clandestine love, and the happiness found by allowing oneself to live freely, coming out, falling in love and leading life on your own terms.

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

World premiere: Toronto 1990

Patricia Rozema’s follow-up to her funny and wise first feature, I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING, is as much about the consequences of naive romanticism as it is 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

“A queer-coded character drama about sensitivity, identity, and idealism, its deeply moving arc needs to be more widely seen.” – Grant Phipps, Tone

In this “journey through genres” bursting with charisma, incredible costumes and a youthful energy, 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.

WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING
DRAMA | LBGTQ+

Seeking Distribution & Festivals
All rights available, excluding North America (Kino Lorber) / Germany, Austria, Switzerland (Salzgeber)

4K RESTORATION

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

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, WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING tells the story of Camille (Pascale Bussières), a professor at a Protestant college in Toronto who’s engaged to fellow professor Martin (Henry Czerny). After a chance meeting Camille is inexplicably drawn to Petra (Rachael Crawford), a flamboyant performer in a Felliniesque circus troupe, throwing her whole conservative life into disarray.

SECRET BALLOT
COMEDY | SOCIAL ISSUES

Seeking Distribution & Festivals
All rights available except USA (Sony Picture Classics), Canada (Mongrel Media)

4K RESTORATION

2001, Canada/Italy/Iran, 105 minutes, Persian
Director: Babak Payami
Based on an idea by Moshen Makhmalbaf
Key cast: Nassim Abdi, Cyrus Ab

Silver Lion, Best Director, Venice International Film Festival 2001

“A gem, captured in the unhurried, low-key style favored by many directors of the Iranian new wave” – Patrick Z. McGavin, Chicago Tribune

“Funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste. ”
– Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Award winner at five international film festivals, SECRET BALLOT is a satirical comedy that humorously sheds light on the universal discrepancies of the voting process and gender differences. It’s Election Day on a remote island off the coast of Iran and a ballot box is parachuted to shore. An unnamed soldier is assigned to escort a female bureaucrat to gather votes. Together, they embark on a chaotic journey, turning the island upside down, desperately seeking anyone’s vote! There is more to the SECRET BALLOT than the two could ever imagine.

SUMMER WITH HOPE
DRAMA | LBGTQ+

Seeking Distribution
All rights available except Canada (Bell Media)

2022, Canada/Iran, 89 minutes, Persian
Director: Sadaf Foroughi (Ava, Fipresci Award, TIFF 2017)
Key Cast: Leili Rashidi, Mehdi Ghorbani, Alireza Kamali, Benyamin Peyrovani

Grand Prix Winner, Crystal Globe Competition, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2022

“Elegant, escalatingly tragic.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

A prestigious competition sets the stage for a conspiracy of collusion between two young swimmers, family members, and their communities.

Young swimmer, Omid (whose name means “Hope” in Persian), along with his mother, Leili, and uncle, Saadi, have each placed their individual fates on one vital upcoming swimming competition. The second film in Sadaf Foroughi’s planned trilogy, SUMMER WITH HOPE examines the pressure-filled expectations of a new generation, for both themselves and their families, as they explore beckoning horizons and newly discovered freedoms. Set against the backdrop of a traditional patriarchal society where tendencies that contradict accepted norms are met with fierce-yet-cloaked resistance, SUMMER WITH HOPE is a classic tragedy of real-world proportions.

I'VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING
COMEDY | LGBTQ+

Seeking Distribution & Festivals
All rights available, excluding North America (Kino Lorber) and Germany, Austria, Switzerland (Salzgeber)

4K RESTORATION

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

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