TORONTO - Sarah Polley couldn't be more delighted that her first feature film, the powerful "Away from Her," is the choice for the Salt Lake City gala on Friday at this year's prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
"They've been crazily supportive of me throughout my career and so it's really nice to end up there with my first feature," Polley says of the way Sundance embraced some of her shorter cinematic pursuits before she adapted an Alice Munro short story into "Away From Her," starring Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie.
"I've always felt, oddly enough, like it was one of the only places I went where I was treated as a filmmaker and not an actress with a hobby."
Nonetheless, the Canadian actress and director is also well aware that the buzz a film generates at Sundance doesn't necessarily translate into success at the box office - and she doesn't intend to worry about it while she hangs out in the ski resort town of Park City, Utah to take in some of the 10-day festival that starts this Thursday and ends Jan. 28.
"People lose a lot of sleep and waste a lot of energy trying to predict how a film will go over at Sundance, if people will like it, if it will get sold, what it will mean at the box office," Polley says.
"And if you just look at the statistics, and try to analyze something, all you can come up with is that it's completely unknowable and not very interesting."
"Away from Her" tells the story of Grant and Fiona, a couple who have been married 45 years and, despite infidelity, are still sweetly in love only to find themselves torn apart by Alzheimer's disease. It features astonishing performances by Pinsent and the ever-luminous Christie, and joins some 10 other Canadian productions appearing at the festival this year.
Polley has a point: some films - like last year's "Little Miss Sunshine," for example - are buoyed by the attention and the buzz heaped on them during Sundance, while others have made big splashes at the festival but gone on to flop at the box office.
Sundance, long respected as a showcase for independent cinema, has come under criticism in recent years when dubious stars like Paris Hilton started showing up, much to the reported dismay of founder Robert Redford. It was Redford's intention more than 20 years ago to start up a film festival that was decidedly anti-Hollywood and low on glitz.
None of that matters to Wayne Clarkson, head of Telefilm Canada who's headed to Sundance on Thursday and vows to ski even though he's never hit the slopes before in his life.
The important thing is the interest and publicity a high-profile festival like Sundance can bring to the Canadian film industry, he says.
"I think it's the biggest year yet we've had in terms of total films represented and I love the eclectic tastes represented in all of them," Clarkson says.
Sundance, he adds, is the perfect place for Canadian films to make some waves.
"Sundance's strength and power is independent American cinema so it works for us since so many Canadian films are independently produced," Clarkson says. "Films like 'Fido' and 'Away from Her' already have U.S. distribution deals, so for those films, Sundance is really just to generate interest and what publicity and promotion they can get. But for other films, their U.S. rights are still open and they're trying to get bought in the States and internationally."
On that front, Clarkson believes "How She Move," a film from Ian Iqbal Rashid that tells the story of a teenaged girl from Toronto with an unlikely passion for step-dancing, has a strong chance of getting snapped up.
"It's going to be interesting to watch given the No. 1 box office hit last week ('Stomp the Yard') was about step-dancing, and 'How She Move' is exactly that," he said. "It doesn't have international or U.S. sales yet, and the timing is good and the subject is very hot."
The strong Canadian presence at Sundance, Clarkson says, also bodes well for 2007.
"I would hazard that the success in terms of the selections and the sheer volume of representation by Canadian films at Sundance - that's going to be sustained at Berlin and at Cannes," he said. "It's going to be one of our most successful years, and I say that artistically and I say that commercially."
Polley agrees that something seems to be afoot in the Canadian film industry, recounting how she recently talked to a group of York University film students who were optimistic that they could make it big in Canada.
"They were are so excited about being Canadian filmmakers, and about staying here, and I'd never heard that," she says.
"There seems to be excitement around it. It's a relief for me, as someone who's been involved for the past six or seven years in the Canadian film industry and it wasn't pretty. Just the idea that some kind of embarrassment has been taken out of the equation is a real relief and that Canadian films are kind of cool again ... that's really exciting."
The Canadian films, shorts and co-productions screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this year:
- "Away From Her," directed by Sarah Polley
- "How She Move," directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid
- "Reves de Poussiere (Buried Dreams)," directed by Laurent Salgues (co-production between Canada, France and Burkina Faso)
- "Hot House," directed by Shimon Dotan (co-production between Canada and Israel)
- "Manufactured Landscapes," directed by Jennifer Baichwal.
- "On a Tightrope," directed by Petr Lom (co-production between Canada and Norway)
- "Sk8 Life," directed by S. Wyeth Clarkson
- "Fido," directed by Andrew Currie
- "The Tragic Story of Nling," directed by Jeffrey St. Jules
- "Ask The Insects," directed by Steve Reinke
- "God Provides," directed by Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky (co-production between Canada and the U.S.)
