Canada country of honour at Sunny Side of the Doc 2016

Montreal/Toronto, June 13, 2016 — Canada is the country of honour at Sunny Side of the Doc 2016, the international market dedicated to linear and interactive documentaries that runs this year from June 20 to 23 in La Rochelle, France. For the event, Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund (CMF), the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), Creative BC, the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), On Screen Manitoba, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), Manitoba Film and Music, and the Government of New Brunswick have joined forces to organize a trade mission under the Canada Pavilion and support a number of promotional activities showcasing Canada at this market. The Hot Docs Festival has also contributed its expertise to this initiative.

The Canadian delegation, consisting of some 60 companies involved in documentary production, will join close to 2,000 international industry professionals and decision-makers.

Spotlight on Canada’s documentary industry
Sunny Side of the Doc enables professionals in the documentary field to present their projects and find new business partners, offers a variety of panel discussions, pitching sessions, presentations by international broadcasters, and screenings of selected films.

To help participants benefit fully from this forum of choice for the documentary industry, various promotional activities have also been organized by the Canadian partners. The panel “How to coproduce with Canada” will kick things off. Producers Carmen Garcia (Argus Films), Anne Pick (Real to Reel Productions), Michael Kot (Saloon Media), Louis-Richard Tremblay (NFB) and Robert Lang (Kensington TV) will speak about their experiences and discuss the advantages and challenges of coproduction. The panel will be introduced by Roxane Girard, Director, Business Affairs and Coproduction at Telefilm Canada, and moderated by Stéphane Cardin, Vice-President, Industry and Public Affairs at the Canada Media Fund.

A matchmaking session and reception celebrating the significant Canadian presence at the market will offer delegates an opportunity to develop business opportunities with their international counterparts.

A dozen of Canadian documentaries, selected at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto and the Montreal International Documentary Festival (Rencontres internationales du Documentaire de Montréal), will also be shown at large-scale public screenings.

Finally, Canadian filmmakers will present their projects at one of the marketplace’s highly coveted activities, the pitching sessions. These sessions will be organized around seven themes, and the following five producers will take part:

  • Vali Fugulin (Vali Fugulin Productions), with Resilient Songs (Docunexion);
  • Lynn Booth (Make Believe Media), with The Secret Life of Owls (Wildlife);
  • Martine Asselin and Annick Daignault (Makila), with Les pieds en haut (Digital Creation);
  • Ina Fichman (Intuitive Pictures), with Laila at the Bridge (Global Issues); and
  • Howard Fraiberg (Proximity Films), with Grimm Tales (Arts and Culture).

To post or share tweets about the Canadian presence at Sunny Side of the Doc, please use the hashtags #eyeoncanada (#vuesurlecanada) and #SSD16.

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Media enquiries:

André Ferreira 
Communications Manager 
Canada Media Fund
416-554-2768
[email protected]

Françoise Lapointe 
Advisor, External Communications 
Telefilm Canada
514-283-0838, ext. 2028 or 1-800-567-0890
[email protected]