The rumours are true

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This article was published 19/01/2024 (947 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was in October of 2022 when double-Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett went on YouTube to step into the “Criterion Closet” with Todd Field (who directed Blanchett in the drama Tár that same year) to choose some of their favourite films on DVD from the boutique home video distributor.

One of the films Blanchett gushed over was Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, his 2007 portrait of his hometown. Reading the blurb of the film on the DVD box, Blanchett even seemed to relish the Maddin-speak term employed to describe the movie: a “docu-fantasia.”

It was a moment that caught the attention of Maddin, his frequent collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson, and Winnipeg producer Liz Jarvis.

“That was one of the things that pointed to the possibility of asking her to be in one of his films,” Jarvis says.

Less than a year after the Criterion Closet visit, beginning in September of 2023, Blanchett was indeed working with Maddin in Hungary on his newest feature film Rumours opposite a stellar international cast including fellow Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Roy Dupuis (The Rocket), Denis Ménochet (Inglourious Basterds), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Knock at the Cabin), Rolando Ravello (Perfect Strangers), Takehiro Hira (Gran Turismo) and Zlatko Burié (Triangle of Sadness).

The film was produced by Buffalo Gal Pictures (Jarvis, Phyllis Laing), Square Peg (Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen) and Maze Pictures (Philipp Kreutzer). Elevation Pictures holds Canadian distribution rights, and last week, Bleecker Street acquired the American distribution rights.

The premise of the film has a group of liberal leaders getting lost in the woods at an international, G7-like conference.

Jarvis says the film is the most expensive feature Maddin has ever made, although she can’t announce the budget.

For his part, Maddin is even more tight-lipped.

“I’m not really allowed to say much owing to NDA agreements,” Maddin said on his way to a belated Toronto Christmas celebration with his daughter (delayed because of the film shoot).

“Having done this in virtual secrecy was strange.”

But Maddin suggested Evan Johnson might have been a better source anyway because he “wrote the script and directed most of the film.”

Johnson and his brother Galen have collaborated on a few films with Maddin, including The Green Fog and Forbidden Room.

Johnson, in a phone interview, asserts the film was a collaboration between the three partners.

“We’re officially a team, the three of us, writing and directing,” says Evan, who is back in Winnipeg editing the film. “This was slightly more initiated by me because I mostly wrote the script. That is probably what Guy is referring to.”

But Johnson says the film will still feel like a Maddin movie.

“It still has his sense of humour, his affinity for melodrama, a retreat — or an ascent — to surrealism, when the time is right. As usual, there will be a feeling for intense artificiality when it’s called for,” he says.

“But I’d say this is a bit different because of the budget and the scale and because of the stars attached, but mostly because of the premise which involves G7. It’s a contemporary movie with something like real world figures. It has a stronger foundation in reality, I guess you’d say, compared to what people are used to from Guy’s movies.

“You can’t get our DNA out of it, but it will look and feel different.”

Johnson confirms that seeing Blanchett praise Maddin gave them hope she might participate in the film.

“She was someone we were interested in before that, but we thought it wasn’t even worth trying,” Johnson says.

“But when we saw that mentioning Guy’s work, we spoke to producers Lars and Ari and they just immediately told us that Kate and Ari knew each other, so it was easy enough to just ask and go straight to the source.

“And it was pretty easy to cast the movie once Cate was interested.”

The editing process should be completed within two months, he says.

After that, expect a release later this year, Jarvis says.

“We are aiming for a 2024 release. I think that means it will be in one of the spring, summer or fall festivals.”