Canadian directors throw light on the motivation behind their films, animations

Nineteen films from Canada will be screened as part of the Global Village program at this year\'s Shanghai International Film Festival.

The selection includes 11 films in the Focus Canada section, six in the Spectrum section, one in the Children’s Film section and one in the MIDA documentary section.

Six of the films\' directors shared the ideas behind their works at a Focus Canada press conference yesterday.

Director Jean-Sébastien Lord made a short documentary about a security guard a few years ago and that’s when he got the inspiration for the new movie L’ange Gardien (The Guardian Angel).

The story concerns a retired policeman working in a building as a night guard when a robbery occurs one evening.

“I thought the environment he worked in involved a lot of loneliness and it really touched me," Lord said.

" I thought about that man when I considered making a movie and I was wondering what if that night somebody went and knocked on the door. Who would be the person? And this was where my story started,” Lord said.

Director Pierre Greco talked about the inspiration behind his animation film Le Coq de St-Victor (Rooster Doodle-Doo) which is  about a rooster that punctually awakens the town every morning at 4am.

“In many countries the roosters wake up people in the morning,” he said.

“My wife is a writer, we were travelling in Italy and she couldn’t sleep because there was a rooster yelling all night. She didn’t sleep and wrote the story. Later we made the movie.”

Cruel & Unusual is a fantasy film about a man wrongly condemned for killing his wife-a fact he refuses to accept and finds himself in a mysterious institution in hell.

“I was trying to find a fresh approach to what happens in the after-life,” said director Merlin Dervisevic. “I wanted to explore different ideas.”

The films featured in Focus Canada are from a wide range of themes, from comedies to thrillers.