 Thriving on the International Circuit |
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Page 2 of 2 Work the press anglebetween 300 and 350 came and the line of people waiting to buy tickets wound around the blockInstantly, she grasped the spicy angle her story represented to Canadian news media: the Canadian filmmaker feted in Europe and rejected at home. She sent out a press release and calls from reporters flowed in. The stories that followed helped build her profile in Canada. “Too many Canadian filmmakers are complacent,” Nadda says. “They think that if they don’t get into the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s over.” In all, Nadda’s work has been featured in 30 retrospectives, including one at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto. The day of that screening, the person who had mounted Nadda’s retrospective was all aflutter. Did Nadda think as many as 20 people would show up so the screening could break even? he asked her. In the end between 300 and 350 came and the line of people waiting to buy tickets wound around the block. Reach for a world audienceNadda’s international reputation, and her work at maintaining the relationships she built at the festivals, helped again after she finished Sabah. The feature had its premiere at the Rotterdam festival in February 2005 and was released to the big screen in May, deliberately bypassing the Toronto International Film Festival. It ran in cinemas for 13 weeks.Europeans remembered her. They were rooting for her and flocked to see the feature. “All these people felt they had had a hand in the birth of a filmmaker,” says Nadda. Now Nadda is working on Cairo Time, which she hopes will star Meryl Streep and which will start filming in November 2006 in Egypt. Its projected budget is about $5 million (U.S.) at the moment. “People say to me: ‘Why isn’t it enough to be a Canadian filmmaker?’” Nadda says. “But I want the whole world to see my films.”  |
