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Come Oscar time, as Hollywood grabs the world's attention, a vague wistfulness wafts through the Canadian film community. Why? Few outside the industry realize the key role Canada, and particularly its biggest film festivals, play in getting some of these award-winning films off the ground.
Case in point: Waltz with Bashir, the front-runner to take home the award for best foreign-language picture on Sunday night.
Acclaimed for its inventive blend of animation and documentary in depicting the 1982 Lebanese War, Israeli director Ari Folman's concept for the film (which is in Hebrew) was a difficult sell to financial backers. A serious documentary using animation is obviously outside the norm and raised questions about what tack the director would take and the tone of the piece.
In the end, it took a pitching session at Toronto's Hot Docs festival in 2005 to get international broadcasters interested enough to back the film.
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As part of its festival, Hot Docs hosts a two-day Toronto Documentary Forum for industry delegates. Organizers receive a deluge of scripts and proposals from filmmakers interested in pitching their ideas, but only a few dozen, in various stages of early conception, are selected to participate.
Then during the forum, in an imposing room filled with representatives from broadcasters and film distributors from around the world, filmmakers sit at a centre table and are given seven minutes each to formally make their pitch.
Also seated at the table are commissioning editors, broadcasters and other buyers.
The prospective buyers from different countries then get to ask questions, all with the aim of making a sale. In the case of Waltz with Bashir, rights to Israel had already been sold. Channel 8 in Tel Aviv was on board. In fact, in order to participate in the forum, each project already has to have at least one broadcaster backing it.
“We had marvellous, previous experience with Ari Folman,” said Sinai Abt, the head of Channel 8 in Tel Aviv. “He approached us with a general idea of an animated documentary about his experiences during the Lebanon war in 1982. There was neither a script nor even a demo ready when we joined in.”
But by the time of Hot Docs, Folman had a three-minute animated clip of the film to show potential investors.
“I think everybody loved the project, [but] a lot of them had trouble with the concept that an animated documentary would work,” said Chris McDonald, executive director of Hot Docs. “I went back and looked at the [quotes in] transcripts [from the 2005 forum]: ‘fascinating;' ‘very creative, very impressive;' ‘brave and innovative.' But a lot of broadcasters couldn't quite figure an existing slot they had where it might work.”
When the completed film eventually screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008, Folman said the film wouldn't have been made if it weren't for financing deals done at Hot Docs, according to McDonald. There were two takers for Waltz with Bashir's pitch – San Francisco-based independent production funder ITVS International and the television network Arte France, which together put nearly half a million dollars into the film, McDonald said.
There were 38 or so broadcasters and buyers also at the table that day who couldn't commit money to the project. “And I'm sure those other 38 are kicking themselves right now,” McDonald said.