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It was announced today at the VFX Summit in Dublin that the Cartoon Saloon and Aircraft Pictures production is closing finance now.

Financing is being completed now for the animated feature The Breadwinner, based on Deborah Ellis’ bestselling and influential novel.

Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea) and Canada’s Aircraft Pictures (Cybergeddon, Todd & The Book of Pure Evil) are partnering on the animated family feature.

Paul Young, co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, announced at the VFX Summit in Dublin today that production is expected to begin on the film in April 2015, with a theatrical launch planned for 2017. StudioCanal will release the film in the UK, building on its work with Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar nominee The Secret of Kells and the forthcoming Song of the Sea.

Cartoon Saloon partner Nora Twomey [pictured], who co-directed Kells, will direct.

The Breadwinner tells the story of Parvana, a young girl living under Taliban rule in...

At this year's Mutek electronic music festival in Montreal, British producer Matthew Herbert will be bringing two very unique and unrelated live shows to Canadian audiences for the first time. The first is "One Pig," based on his 2011 album of the same name where the 41-year-old collected sounds while following a pig's short life from birth to dinner plate.

The other, "The End Of Silence," couldn't be more different. It's an entire album based on one five-second sample of a bomb exploding in war-torn Libya that he and three collaborators contorted and stretched using hacked golf video game controllers. He later found out that two people had perished in the explosion, which dramatically changed his perception of the project. "The End Of Silence" will be released on June 24.

Herbert will also perform a DJ set at Mutek, for the first time under his Wishmountain moniker, although during our Skype conversation...

Monterey Media has acquired all U.S. rights from Entertainment One Film International for the coming-of-age drama "The Lesser Blessed," starring Benjamin Bratt, Kiowa Gordon ("The Twilight Saga") and Chloe Rose (TV's "Degrassi: The Next Generation). The film was written and directed by Anita Doron ("The End of Silence"), and world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival late last year. Here's the synopsis, per Monterey: "Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Richard Van Camp, 'The Lesser Blessed' is an eye-opening depiction of what it is like to be a vulnerable teenager in today’s modern world. Through the eyes of Larry Sole, a Native-American teenager filled with bravado and angst, comes the story of three unlikely friends isolated in a small rural town discovering what they can of life and love amid racial tensions and the recklessness of youth, in a world clouded by a dark mystery from his.

Contemporary World Cinema in Toronto International Film Festival is screening the world premiere of The Lesser Blessed, directed by Anita Doron and starring Benjamin Bratt. High school is especially harsh for Larry Sole (Joel Nathan Evans), a teenaged metal-head living in a remote community in the Northwest Territories. Shy and ruminative, he’s taunted daily by his town’s golden boy and resident bully, Darcy (Adam Butcher). This is because of Larry’s tortured past, and his aboriginal roots: he, his mother Verna (Tamara Podemski) and her sometime boyfriend Jed (Benjamin Bratt) are all members of the Tlicho First Nation.

Director Anita Doron is remarkable in her own right. She was born in Transcarpathia, in the former Ussr, and later defected to Canada. Her first feature, The End of Silence (06) won the Best Feature Film award at the Canadian Filmmakers’ Festival. She was a co-director of the interactive feature Late Fragment (07), which played the Festival. Her other features include Europa, East (10), Mystico Fantástico! (11) and The Lesser Blessed (12).

In a brief roundtable discussion with Benjamin Bratt and three other reporters (from Berlin, Sydney and Budapest) and yours truly, Benjamin Bratt, looking as young as a teenager, spoke about his transition to pater familias in his own private life with Talisa Soto and thier two children as well as in his part in this film. He likes helping lead the way for the young who are ruderless, for the ones with no voice whose culture has been cut away unceremoniously from their lives by conquering civilizations.

He speaks for himself and his own Peruvian people (Qechua) when he begins to discuss the issue of disenfranchisement and how it affects the youth and how, as in this film, if they can be shown how to reconnect with their cultures then they can begin to open new pathways in their personal and social lives. His own mother, a native American activist, took her five children along when she was part of the Alcatraz prison takeover in 1970, so he has learned this from the cradle. When he saw the script to The Lesser Blessed, he immediately sent it to his brother Peter Bratt with a note saying that this is the sort of story he wishes he could make with his brother. He considers himself blessed for being able to sustain a television series which allows him to make the small independent features like The Lesser Blessed.

To follow up on yesterday's roundup of Un Certain Regard remainders...

"The Tati-inspired dance trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy are at it again, crafting an awfully similar follow-up to their previous feature, Rumba." Blake Williams for Ioncinema: "The Fairy is light on magic and the supernatural, but flutters breezily along with joke-a-minute fluff…. As in their other films, the 'plot' — this one involving a wish-granting fairy — is only really a conceit by which to give the illusion of continuity to what is essentially a string of short films." Screen's Fionnuala Halligan's enjoyed it, though: "Theirs is an old-fashioned, almost silent, routine (their first feature L'Iceberg was virtually wordless) blended beautifully with an arresting dance element." In the Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Mintzer notes that "Tati's hand is evident in the exceptionally precise art direction and camerawork by regulars Nicholas Girault and Claire Childeric."

"The Silver Cliff was...

Few films deal with the difficulties and uncertainties inherent in immigration. Anita Doron's The End of Silence is one of those films that promise a lot with their premise. However, it turns out to be clumsily developed film and a dull one.

In The End of Silence, world-class ballerina Ekaterina Chtchelkanova plays Darya, a Russian immigrant. In her native Russia, Darya was a ballerina working for a prestigious company. However, she decided to immigrate to Canada (precisely in Toronto). Once there, Darya finds it hard to adapt herself, because she barely speaks English.

However, she'll come across Eddie (John Tokatlidis), an antique store owner. This is the moment when, as the film's title suggests, both of them fall in love. Besides, Eddie also helps Darya to learn English by buying for her a Russian-English dictionary and by helping her to practice her English. Even though Eddie no longer lives with his ex-wife,...