Hollywood North: Canada in the spotlight

We have a lot to thank Canada for. James Cameron is a fellow native and is responsible for the highest and third highest grossing films of all time with ‘Avatar’ and ‘Titanic’ respectively; Denis Villeneuve, another fellow native is set to release the highly anticipated ‘Dune’ next month, and Keanu Reeves (raised in Toronto) is soon to be seen in ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ later this year. Canada is also where Netflix first expanded as a global streamer back in 2010. The following year Netflix was launched in Latin America and the Caribbean. Netflix is now available in 190+ markets worldwide with 209 million paying subscribers, a year-on-year increase of 8%. In the second quarter of 2021, Netflix added 1.5 million net new subscribers globally (compared to ten million in the second quarter of 2020). In the U.S./Canada market, subscriber counts had fallen by 430,000 totalling 73 million subscribers.

Now if it wasn’t for Drake, people would still be asking Ashley Walters when is ‘Top Boy’ coming back? Fortunately (for Top Boy fans anyway) it did come back to our screens, on Netflix (with the support of Lebron James) on 13 September 2019. Series 3 featured episodes directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (‘King Richard’) and Nia DaCosta who made history earlier this year when she became the first Black female director to have a film debut at number one (in its’ opening weekend) at the U.S. domestic box office with ‘Candyman’. DaCosta was already making history in August 2020 when she became the youngest filmmaker to direct a Marvel film (‘The Marvels’) beating the record set by Ryan Coogler. Released on 27 August this year, Candyman posted an opening gross of $20.4 million dollars, rising to $53.4 million dollars total domestic during its 4 week run. The production budget was $25 million dollars and was a co-production between MGM, Monkeypaw (founded by Jordan Peele) and Bron Creative (not founded by Lebron James) – the latter being based in Canada. 

For those who remember Series 1 of Top Boy, the show originally aired across 4 nights on Channel 4 in the 10pm ‘Highlife’ hour back in October 2011. I remember debating with some people on Twitter at the time whether they should’ve just made it as a feature / franchise? Needless to say, I was also debating the viewing figures for Top Boy which turned into a Twitter beef (it wasn’t that deep).

Series 1 average viewing figures were 1.6 million, with a peak figure of 1.69 million for its 2nd episode on 1 November 2011.

Series 2 aired 4 weekly episodes, posting averages of 1.14 million with a peak figure of 1.39 million for its opening episode on 20 August 2013.

Discarded by Channel 4, when all 10 episodes of series 3 launched in a flurry on Netflix, according to figures released by them, Top Boy was the most watched show on Netflix UK in the week of its launch, coming ahead of ‘Power’, ‘Tall Girl’, ‘Unbelievable’, ‘The I-Land’, ‘Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father’, ‘Suits’, ‘13 Reasons Why’, ‘The Spy’, and ‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’. Clearly that was enough for Netflix to order Season 4 which is currently in production. The fact that it took a Canadian rap artist to recognise and place value on the artistic and creative endeavours of a “distinctively British” programme like Top Boy will forever remain a constant source of bafflement. 

Canada is also home to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) founded in 1976 and is now one of the largest and most prestigious film festivals in the world, regularly attracting high profile films, stars and market activity. The festival’s People’s Choice Award — which is based on audience balloting — has emerged as an indicator of success during awards season, especially at the Academy Awards. Past recipients of this award include Oscar-winning films, such as ‘Life Is Beautiful’ (1998), ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000), ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (2008), ‘The King’s Speech’ (2010), ‘12 Years a Slave’ (2013), ‘La La Land’ (2016), ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ (2017), ‘Green Book’ (2018), ‘Jojo Rabbit’ (2019), and ‘Nomadland’ (2020).

Earlier this year, I was honoured to have been invited by the Caribbean Tales Media Group (in partnership with the Toronto International Film Festival) to become a juror for their Creators of Colour Incubator (CCI), a month-long development lab which ends later this week and is funded by Telefilm Canada, Ontario Creates,The Canada Media Fund, The British Council, and the Canadian Embassy in Trinidad & Tobago. The lab offered 5 teams the opportunity to be mentored by industry leaders with a specific focus on mid-career and established filmmakers who have UK/Canada co-productions in development. The aim of the incubator is to assist projects into the co-production landscape by introducing filmmakers to funders, broadcasters and producers who can move their projects forward.  

CCI culminates with the popular and highly anticipated Big Pitch competition, an opportunity for participants to pitch their projects to a TIFF virtual audience as well as to an industry jury which, in addition to myself, included Renee Robinson (Film Commissioner of Jamaica), Lea Marin (Director of drama development for Canadian state broadcaster CBC), Usman Mullan (Development producer at BBC Writersroom) and Carlene Marshall-King (TV Producer whose recent list of credits include ‘Les Miserables‘ for Sky Arts and the TV film ‘Torvill and Dean‘). The 2021 Big Pitch Edition streamed earlier this month via TIFF’s Industry website and on CaribbeanTales-TV. The winners (to be announced later this week) will benefit from a 3-month industry mentorship in partnership with CTMG and its industry partners, as well as additional funding and prizes to put towards their films. 

Now in its 12^th year, CCI has successfully hosted over 200 filmmakers from around the world. Past participants have included director Dawn Wilkinson (‘Empire’, ‘How To Get Away With Murder’), writer Faisal Lutchmedial (‘Ransom’), writer/director Nathalie Younglai (‘Coroner’), Director/Actor Jimmy Jean-Louis (‘Rattlesnake’, ‘HEROES’), Actor/Director Paul Pryce (Marvel’s ‘Jessica Jones’), and acclaimed British filmmaker, the late Menelik Shabazz. This year’s participants in the Incubator program were Frida Banks (‘East is West’), Tarique Qayumi (‘Kabul Kitchen’), Nadean Rawlins and Letay Williams (‘Traytown’), Mary Wells (‘Moya’s Love’), and Mariel Brown, Lesley-Anne Macfarlane and Tracey Farrag (‘1990’). Having read and watched their pitches, several projects stood out and I have high hopes for 1 in particular which bears striking similarities with a project I currently have in development in my capacity as a film producer.  

The figurehead behind the Incubator and everything else besides has every reason to be considered another great Canadian export though her roots are very much UK to the core. Frances-Anne Solomon is an award-winning filmmaker, a voting member of the Directors Guild of Canada and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, and a Director member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Part of her role there includes working with the governors to make certain decisions about the branch, including coming up with people to invite going forward, and having a say in how the selections for the Oscars are made.

She said of her appointment: “Being a member of the directors’ branch is incredibly significant to me because of all the things I do, the centre of myself is as a director, and it’s also the hardest role for a woman, and a woman of colour, to be recognised in, because it is the prime creative role. “So that is a source of great pride to me, that I am recognised by the academy as a director.” 

Born in England to Trinidadian parents, Solomon started her professional life at the BBC, where she was a successful television drama producer and executive producer in single drama and films. Amongst her list of credits are ‘Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon’ (1998) co-starring a certain Daniel Craig and released by Artificial Eye. The film grossed £259,421 ($0.4 million) at the UK box office and $354,004 at the US box office. In the same year Solomon directed the BAFTA award-winning ‘Peggy Su!’ which to date remains one of the very few British feature films to depict the lives of the Chinese in Britain. It was also the first UK feature film to ever receive National lottery funding.

In 2001, she moved to Canada, where she became the founder and CEO of the CaribbeanTales Media Group, which produces, exhibits, and distributes Caribbean-themed content from around the world. In 2014, she founded CineFAM, a non-profit group that showcases and supports women creatives of colour worldwide. She co-founded the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival which was launched in 2020. 

In October 2019 I had the good fortune of seeing one of her films in London, ‘HERO: Inspired By The Extraordinary Life And Times Of Mr. Ulric Cross’. Shot across several continents, the movie is a portrait of a Caribbean black hero, like the people Solomon grew up with when she was a child in Trinidad, men and women who came from a small place and went onto leave huge legacies around the world. Notwithstanding some fine acting performances from Joseph Marcell (‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’) and his successor Jimmy Akingbola (playing Kwame Nkrumah), the film merited a much wider theatrical release than how it played out 3 years ago. In keeping with her 360 degree approach to the film and TV business, Solomon embarked on a release strategy which also included crowd-funded screenings. In 2019, the film won an African Movie Academy Award for Best Diaspora Narrative Feature Film and has since been picked up by the V.O.D platforms Cineplex in Canada and Showtime and is also available on Amazon Prime.

Speaking recently about the Creators of Colour Incubator, Ms Solomon said: “Our focus is on co-productions that will give Black indigenous and POC producers the tools to build capacity and relationships of synergy with communities of colour in other countries. We look forward to creating international opportunities for our participants as they tread forward creating strong, diverse and compelling content for the global market.” As for TIFF operating a hybrid model this year, Solomon saw upsides to this despite the low sales buzz, as has been reported widely by the trades. “It’s almost like it’s gone back to the good old days of TIFF when the festival belonged to the audience, you know? People are talking about the films that they saw and what they like and how much they enjoy them and it’s kind of a connoisseur’s dream rather than a buyer’s kind of market.” 

It recently emerged that the UK is Canada’s leading co-production partner country and yours truly has it on good authority the financial rewards of filming in Canada. Award-winning filmmaker Jesse Quinones (‘Calloused Hands’) filmed the majority of his sophomore movie ‘Cagefighter’ in the region, affectionately known as Hollywood North, 2 years ago. Quinones, who founded Woolfcub Productions and is represented by Gersh, said: “When I was putting my second feature film Cagefighter together it took me five years to get the film off the ground. Despite being based in the UK for over 20 years I was unable to get the domestic support I needed to get the film over the line. The film was very much on its last straw, and I was very close to giving up the project altogether. It was only when Canadian production companies (Trilight and Anamorphic) came on board, that new life was breathed into the project. Not only did they back me with their words, they backed me with action. They fully financed Cagefighter, pumping over £1 million into the production. We shot the majority of the film in Regina Saksatchewan with a mostly Canadian cast and crew. It was an incredible experience. The crew were hard working, the actors well trained and talented, incredible facilities and sound stages. I would go back there in a heartbeat to make more movies”. 

Continuing the vein of co-productions, Solomon’s next movie – a biopic on journalist and Notting Hill Carnival founder Claudia Jones – sees her teaming up with Nadine Marsh-Edwards’ UK-based Greenacre Films (‘Been So Long’) and Lisa Wickham’s Trinidad and Tobago-based Imagine Media International Limited. Set against the backdrop of violent race riots in Notting Hill in 1958, ‘Claudia’ tells the story of Jones, a Trinidad-born communist deported to England from McCarthyite USA, who comes up with an plan to uplift black people living in Britain. Also attached to the project as co-creator and co-writer is British actress, writer and director Adjoa Andoh (‘Bridgerton’, ‘Dr. Who’, ‘Invictus’) and rising British screenwriter Omari McCarthy. 

Doesn’t look like Drake’s help will be required once more but then again, who would say no to the potential finances of Netflix? (apart from the Emmy and BAFTA award-winning Michaela Coel).

Either way, the Canadian film industry is in good hands with the likes of Solomon doing for Canada and the culture what the late, great Melvin Van Peebles did for the U.S and the culture in a long and storied career which came to a peaceful end (in the flesh anyway) last week. We have an awful lot to thank Mr Van Peebles for. I’m sure his fellow comrade, the late Menelik Shabazz would agree. 

Written by Film Producer and columnist, Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE