Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet will direct a France-Canada co-production based on the novel The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.

French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, shown in 2002 accepting a Spirit Award for Amélie, will helm a France-Canada co-production of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, shown in 2002 accepting a Spirit Award for Amélie, will helm a France-Canada co-production of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. (Associated Press)

The film is one of eight English-language films to be made with money from the Canada Feature Film Fund in the coming year. Telefilm Canada announced Thursday that it would grant $11.2 million in funding to the eight projects approved, but did not reveal individual funding for each film.

Jeunet will be working in Canada with actors Helena Bonham Carter and Judy Davis. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by American novelist Reif Larsen, follows a bright young inventor who presents himself as an orphan to the Smithsonian Museum after he is selected for an award.

It was one of two international co-productions announced by Telefilm. The other is Shana – the Wolf’s Music, an aboriginal story to be shot in Vancouver with Swiss director Nino Jacusso.

The Swiss-Canadian co-production is about a 13-year-old aboriginal girl who flees into the wilderness when her father threatens to sell her beloved violin. There she connects spiritually and emotionally with a she-wolf and discovers a fresh form of musical expression.

Corner Gas star Brent Butt and B.C. director Carl Bessai are also collaborating on a film project, titled No Clue. The comedy follows a bumbling salesman who tries to guide a beautiful woman through a web of corruption and murder, before she finds out that he’s not actually a private detective.

Other projects approved:

  • Hard Drive, by St. John’s director William D. MacGillivray: A naïve young man falls for a mysterious woman, over the objections of his mother.
  • Gerontophilia, by director Bruce LaBruce: To be shot in Montreal, it is the story of a relationship between an 18-year-old boy and an old man.
  • The Birder, by Toronto’s Theodore Bezaire: A mild-mannered birder seeks revenge on a younger rival.
  • The Right Kind of Wrong, by Toronto’s Jeremiah Chechikm: A man sets out to win the heart of a woman who’s already married.
  • Lawrence & Holloman, by Vancouver’s Matthew Kowalchuk: Based on the tragi-comic play by Morris Panych, it follows two friends, one a cynic, one happy-go-lucky, who ponder the nature of happiness.