An 11-minute film by Quebec director Denis Villeneuve and co-producer Phoebe Greenberg of Ottawa has won a top prize in a competition showcasing new talent at the Cannes Film Festival, which wrapped up Sunday.
Next Floor, a surreal, metaphorical film about gluttony shot in a Montreal warehouse, won the Canal+ award for best short film at the International Critics' Week portion of the festival. The competition runs parallel to the official Cannes selections and highlights seven feature films and seven short films by up-and-coming directors.
Canal+ is a French TV network that acquired the right to broadcast the film as part of the prize deal, which also included 6,000 euro.
Greenberg is credited with coming up with the idea for the film, which depicts a group of diners in formal dress gorging themselves on a banquet of exotic meats such as rhinoceros and armadillo, as servers and valets attend to them inside a warehouse. As the meal progresses, they crash through each floor of the warehouse one at a time.
Villeneuve is the director of the 2000 feature film Maelstrom, which won critical acclaim and more than two dozen international prizes.
The screenplay for Next Floor was written by Jacques Davidts.
Caroline Binet co-produced the film with Greenberg, who is the daughter of the late Irving Greenberg, the Ottawa businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Minto Developments.
