A big short: Ten-minute TIFF debut a calling card for four local filmmakers

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This article was published 09/09/2016 (3634 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In its 41st year, the Toronto International Film Festival is kicking off with a bang, or several hundred pistol bangs, with Antoine Fuqua’s opening-night gala screening of the western remake The Magnificent Seven.

But while it’s easy to be distracted by such a purely Hollywood kind of kickoff (Denzel Washington! Chris Pratt!), it is good to remember that the heart of TIFF is found not in its big red-carpet galas but in the smaller, scrappier independent films from around the world.

In a sense, the sole Winnipeg film to play the festival embodies that sensibility, both in its subject matter and in the artists behind it.

Premièring Friday in the festival’s Short Cuts program, Imitations is a film by local collective MarkusMilosIanFabian, which consists of Markus Henkel, Milos Mitrovic, Ian Bawa and Fabian Velasco.

The film has been kept under wraps locally, but it’s safe to say it’s an oddball offering. It follows a star-worshipping introvert named Arnold (played by Mitrovic) who lives to adore pop star Austin Kelsey (played by Conor Sweeney, a member Astron-6, another local film collective with TIFF history). Arnold gets plastic surgery to look like his pop-star idol, but the surgery doesn’t take and Arnold’s face suffers cataclysmic disintegration on the very night he debuts his new look at a karaoke event.

Befitting TIFF’s international claim, the filmmakers themselves are an international quartet. Henkel arrived in Winnipeg from Germany four years ago. Velasco emigrated here from Argentina at the age of 14. Mitrovic is from Bosnia. Bawa is a home-grown Winnipegger. Velasco, Bawa and Mitrovic met at the University of Winnipeg, where they were all studying film.

Velasco says he and his fellow filmmakers will arrive in Toronto on Thursday, opening day, open to the festival experience.

“We don’t really know what to expect,” he says.

They had sent previous films to TIFF for consideration in the short-film program, including The Champ and Under the Neon Lights. Those films were picked up by smaller festivals, including the 2013 Toronto After Dark Festival, and the 2015 Fantastic Fest. But it was Imitations that finally got them the prized TIFF slot.

“It was the surprise of all surprises,” says Bawa, 30. “Of all the films we made, this wasn’t the one we were expecting to blow up. But it’s one of the ego boosts you need every once in a while.”

It’s a film that could have appeal to a wider audience, says Velasco, 28, although it has hasn’t been subjected to the kind of exhaustive test-screening process that usually accompanies Hollywood blockbusters.

“I’ve only shown it to one or two close friends,” he says. Since its inclusion on the TIFF program, “we have had some interest from some distribution companies,” Velasco says, attributing the interest to the film’s subject matter.

“It’s a satire of celebrity worship and that world, and it also has to do with our own insecurities, of wanting to be someone else.”

The four filmmakers intend to saturate themselves in the festival, Velasco says, given their access to TIFF’s press-and-industry screenings, which function as a utilitarian shadow festival in which all TIFF movies are screened without the red carpeting and hype surrounding the public screenings.

“We’ll probably be watching one of two movies a day, on top of all the parties and brunches that they have,” he says. The quartet will attend the annual Manitoba Night party at the Drake Hotel, held annually on the evening of the first Sunday of the fest.

Henkel, 28, came from Germany because his girlfriend lives here, but also because he got a job working on post-production duties at Farpoint Films. He says the TIFF experience isn’t necessarily a game-changer.

“But it’s a step towards a career in film and it may help us get funding in the future for other projects,” he says.

“And if we can actually make movies for a living, that will be a game-changer for us,” Bawa says.

Imitations will be eligible for the Short Cuts Award for Best Film, and the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film. Past festivals have been kind to short filmmakers from Winnipeg, including Deco Dawson, who won the best Canadian short film prize in 2001 for Film(dzama).

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing