A still from Who By Fire Film Still, Canadian director Philip Lesage’s follow-up to his widely acclaimed 2018 drama Genesis.Supplied
It was not all that long ago when Canadian director Kazik Radwanski felt like he was the fresh-faced kid on the Toronto film scene, somehow managing to direct a handful of microbudget films as well as bring his scrappy screening series, MDFF Selects, inside the vaunted walls of the TIFF Lightbox every month.
Back in 2017, Radwanski and his producing partner Daniel Montgomery had just premiered their acclaimed character drama How Heavy This Hammer on the festival circuit. At the same time, they were eager to bring the independent spirit of their nascent MDFF series – named after their production company, and focusing on Canadian and international cinema that otherwise bypassed Toronto audiences –inside TIFF. They didn’t have a plan so much as they did ambition, hopeful that there were enough moviegoers out there who shared their taste for such on-the-margins filmmakers as Hong Sang-soo, Alex Ross Perry and Philippe Grandrieux.
“We were so used to being the young people there, but now I’m looking around and I guess we’re the elder statesmen,” said Radwanski with a laugh. “It’s great to see the new wave of younger audiences coming to our screenings, Gen Z and below. But we’ve tried to keep it the same – maybe we’re able to think ahead a little more, planning a few months in advance.”
That is far from the only thing to have changed for MDFF. Almost a decade later, the Toronto-based outfit can honestly lay claim to being one of the most influential forces in independent Canadian cinema – which is, to be honest, almost the entirety of Canadian cinema.
Radwanski and Montgomery are still riding high off of the success of last year’s dramedy Matt and Mara, which has scored won acclaim around the world as well as significant U.S. distribution through Cinema Guild. But the pair have also expanded their company’s own distribution efforts, including the currently touring road show of Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s comedy The Heirloom. And their TIFF series has become the hottest ticket on the calendar, with anticipation high for this month’s Toronto premiere of the intense drama Who By Fire, Canadian director Philip Lesage’s follow-up to his widely acclaimed 2018 drama Genesis.
Despite premiering to strong reviews at the Berlinale in early 2024 and then going on to play the New York Film Festival, Who By Fire has been all but ignored in Canada’s biggest filmgoing cities, including TIFF’s own annual festival.Supplied
“Kaz and I met for the first time at the Vienna film festival, and I could see that he had such a sincerity about him – it’s nice to work with fellow filmmakers who have that generosity of spirit,” said Lesage, who noted how difficult it can be to expose Québécois films to not just the rest of the world, but particularly audiences in English-speaking Canada. “It’s small – step by step, person to person. But every film that gets a little bit more attention for me, that’s getting somewhere.”
In many ways, Who By Fire is emblematic of the MDFF philosophy. The epic-length coming-of-age drama, which follows the reunion of two filmmaking families in rural Quebec as viewed through the perspective of one of the clan’s teenage sons, is just the kind of enigmatic and ambitious film that adventurous Canadian moviegoers would devour – if only they knew it even existed. Despite premiering to strong reviews at the Berlinale in early 2024 and then going on to play the New York Film Festival, Lesage’s movie has been all but ignored in Canada’s biggest filmgoing cities, including TIFF’s own annual festival.
“While we’re happy to be playing it for the first time in Toronto, at the same time we’re kind of shocked,” said Montgomery, who noted that Lesage will attend the TIFF screening, as well as host a master class at Humber Polytechnic the following day. “In a way it feels like MDFF Selects is the last stop for films that no one else has picked up before, but maybe we have also shifted that line of thinking to say, you know what, we’re going to find these films and bring them to Toronto. That’s a better way of looking at it.”
Every once in a while, there is a film that MDFF – and the staff inside TIFF who help Radwanski and Montgomery with operational infrastructure – cannot secure. The team had their eyes, for instance, trained on locking in Annie Baker’s acclaimed directorial debut Janet Planet (which skipped Canadian theatres altogether) for a one-night MDFF screening, before talks with U.S. distributor A24 fell apart.
Yet for the most part, it is clear that MDFF’s titles are registering with audiences, whether they’re part of one-off screenings or gradually travelling across the country, à la The Heirloom and previous distribution titles Queens of the Qing Dynasty, The Maiden, and Concrete Valley. Even if the way that audiences see movies – of any size – has changed dramatically since their earlier days.
“Back in 2019, I would have wanted any distributed film to play for at least a week theatrically in Toronto at a minimum, but in our current landscape that isn’t the norm,” said Radwanski. “With The Heirloom, Dan and I have realized that there is a way to get a film out there with one-night screenings. When we were touring with Matt and Mara in London or L.A., it would play for one night, and if it did well, it would hold over for longer. It’s important to get the filmmakers there for the screenings, to do Q&As, meet the audiences. These little niches are found and built.”
MDFF Select’s TIFF series has become the hottest ticket on the calendar, with anticipation high for this month’s Toronto premiere of Who By Fire.Supplied
While Radwanski and Montgomery are optimistic about the general state of Canadian cinema among their contemporaries – “You have someone like Matt Johnson, who was in our film, getting all this exposure for BlackBerry, or Chandler Levack getting attention for her next movie” – there is a bearish note about those who might be following their generation.
“Where there’s pause for me is that I don’t see it happening with Gen Z yet – I feel like there should be some 26, 27 year-old directors breaking through right now,” sais Radwanski. “I guess I was hoping that Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program would be brimming over.”
Meanwhile, MDFF will continue to try to bridge the gap. The team is currently working on the feature narrative debut of Canadian documentarian Yung Chang (2007’s Up the Yangtze), the theatrical release of Mexican-Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda’s sly new drama Lazaro at Night, and exploring the possibilities of international co-production financing. At the same time, Radwanski and Montgomery are working on making another movie of their own to follow up the success of Matt and Mara.
“I have a few bigger ideas, but what Matt and Mara made me realize was that I don’t want to make something that’s too different. I want to keep making films in Toronto,” said Radwanski. “Hopefully there’s a way to work with Deragh [Campbell] and Johnson again. It’s this rare opportunity: we have all these great people living here, right? So we might be able to make something before this era passes.”
MDFF Selects presents Philippe Lesage’s Who By Fire on Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at the TIFF Lightbox (tiff.net).
