The Montreal World Film Festival (WFF) was founded in 1977. It is held every August in Montreal, Quebec. Unlike TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) that focuses mainly on Canadian and other North American films, the Montreal World Film Festival presents a diverse program including films from around the world.
According to the organizers, the Montreal World Film Festival aims to promote promising filmmakers and innovative works, to discover, support and encourage new talents, to facilitate meetings between industry professionals from all over the world, to foster the cinema of all continents by stimulating the development of quality cinema, and to encourage cultural diversity and mutual understanding between nations.
The Montreal World Film Festival hosts two film competitions: the World Competition and the First Film World Competition. The World Competition is open to world and international premieres. The festival’s international jury presents awards for feature films in several categories and two special prizes for short films. The main award of the festival is the Grand Prix of the Americas (Grand Prix des Amériques).
The First Films World Competition gives the opportunity to emerging filmmakers who’ve just completed their first feature films to get their big break. A separate jury presents three awards to the winners: the Golden Zenith, Silver Zenith and Bronze Zenith.
Along with competitive screenings, the program of the Montreal World Film Festival includes out-of-competition sections such as World Greats, Our Cinema (Quebec and Canada), Focus on World Cinema (films from all continents), Documentaries of the World, Chinese Film Festival, Student Film Festival, Cinema Under the Stars, and Tributes. Francophone films are screened in almost all sections of the festival, proving that Quebec is the only one province in Canada to have a predominantly French-speaking population.
Photo: Sylvain Légaré — FFM2014
