Totem Films Nabs World Sales Rights to Sofia Bohdanowicz’s ‘Measures for a Funeral,’ Releases Exclusive Clip Ahead of Toronto Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

Paris-based Totem Films has acquired world sales rights, excluding Canada, to Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz’s “Measures for a Funeral” in advance of the film’s world premiere in the Toronto Film Festival’s Centrepiece program.

Margot Hervée, Totem’s head of sales and acquisitions, first encountered Bohdanowicz’s work a few years ago. “It immediately resonated with me,” she told Variety. “We’re thrilled to now have her as part of the Totem family and to represent her latest film.”

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Vortex Media is the film’s Canadian distributor.

As part of today’s announcement, Totem has shared with Variety a first teaser for “Measures,” which stars Deragh Campbell as Audrey Benac — a “family detective” character she has played in previous Bohdanowicz films, including the feature “MS Slavic 7,” which premiered in Berlin in 2019 and also screened in Toronto.

Filmed in Canada, the U.K. and Norway, “Measures”— which won the Kodak and Silveryway Award during FIDMarseille’s co-production lab in 2020 — follows graduate student Audrey as she traces the story of real-life pioneering Canadian violin prodigy Kathleen Parlow (1890–1963) after discovering a lost concerto dedicated to Parlow in the university’s music department archives.

Haunted by memories of her dying mother’s unfilled artistic dreams, Audrey seeks to resurrect Parlow’s legacy by mounting a full-scale performance of the work.

“I knew about Parlow because she was a legend in my family,” Bohdanowicz told Variety last week, in her first interview about the film. “Parlow mentored my grandfather, who was second fiddle in the Toronto Symphony. My first memories of going to a concert are sitting in Roy Thomson Hall and watching him play.”

In 2016, Bohdanowicz saw an article in the Toronto Star about the discovery in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music stacks of Parlow’s manuscript score of Opus 28, a 1909 composition by Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen. The work was dedicated to Parlow, who performed it in Holland when she was 18; it then went missing and was listed as lost in notable music reference volumes until 2016.

“Right away I went to the library to look at the manuscript,” Bohdanowicz said. “Eventually, after (the piece) was finally performed in Norway by the Malmo Symphony, I heard a recording and was stunned by the piece. As I was studying the archive, I kept asking if it was going to be performed in Canada anytime soon.

“The ambiguity around it — or, I guess, the lack of interest in the piece of music — kind of made me want to pursue the performance of it,” she said.

The Parlow archive is a treasure of photographs, paper ephemera and diaries that add granular detail to the film script and visuals. “What you see in the film only scratches the surface,” Bohdanowicz adds.

Another coup in the film is the return to the big screen — specifically its sound system — of celebrated Canadian singer Mary Margaret O’Hara (the beloved 1988 album Miss America) as the voice of Kathleen Parlow. “She is such an intuitive artist who has this great gift of improvisation,”  Bohdanowicz said. “She has an incredibly unique voice that has a warm tone that also has a ghostly presence.”

The film culminates in a live concert of Opus 28 in Montreal performed by the Orchestre Métropolitain and world-renowned Spanish violinist María Dueñas Fernández, who both performs the work and plays the character of the young violinist. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin — who has recently worked with Chloe Robichaud on her Toronto-premiering “Days of Happiness” and with Bradley Cooper on “Maestro” — also does double duty as conductor and actor.

“Measures for a Funeral” is produced by Aonan Yang and Andrea Mendritzki of Montreal-based GreenGround Productions (Denis Côté’s “Social Hygiene” and “Wilcox”) and Bohdanowicz, and co-produced by Priscilla Galvez.

The acquisition of “Measures” adds to Totem’s 2023 slate of film, which includes Mo Harawe’s Cannes premiere “The Village Next to Paradise,” Berlinale titles “My Favourite Cake” (directed by Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha) and “Crossing” (Levan Akin), and Juho Kuosmanen’s “The Silent Trilogy.”

“Measures for a Funeral” has its world premiere on Saturday Sept. 7 at the Toronto Film Festival.

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