COCHRANE - Two filmmakers are planning to produce a short film that will be shot in the area this spring.
Ali Watson and her husband Timothy Girgis said the roughly 17-minute movie titled The Oddsmakers was largely inspired by Cochrane and will be filmed over three days in May.
Filming locations will include the Railway Cafe, the railway platform, the Cochrane Municipal Airport and a local home.
“The point of us filming in Cochrane is very intentional. It was very much written for the area and inspired by the area. The locations are meant to serve almost as an additional character in the film,” Girgis said.
Girgis said they’ve partnered with New York-based Legacy Comics, which is creating a short comic version of the script.
“That's in progress already. They’re very much working off of location photos that we've given them, so, in essence, it's very much a comic book about Cochrane,” he said.
The story follows a man on a day’s journey, Girgis said.
“A friend of his comes to him for help and he is forced to make a decision to sacrifice everything he's built in his life to help his friend or to betray his friends to a militaristic government. And we explored the relationship between two differing members of the African diaspora,” he said.
“Hopefully, the audience will walk away asking themselves where do I fit in into my community and what are my obligations to my community. I personally believe that when you watch a great movie or show or theatre that you walk away not thinking about what you saw, but asking questions about your own life.”
There will be roughly 25 cast and crew members involved in filming, Girgis said.
“We're predominantly utilizing talents and crew from within Ontario. We're going to try and work with people locally as well to crew up some production assistants and folks like that to be able to assist; that was a specific ask from the Taykwa Tagamou Nation, is that we offer that possibility to people,” he said.
“We've contacted some local artists. We’ve got a musician in town so we're going to be meeting with him next week to see if there's anything on the composing side that he can contribute and we reached out to Adam J. McKay from Timmins to see if he'd be interested in coming on board as a cinematographer. So, we're trying to utilize as much local talent as possible.”
Canadore College in North Bay is also putting out a call to its film program students for roles Watson and Girgis need to be filled.
Recruiting crew members has been challenging because of the state of the film industry in Northern Ontario, Girgis said.
"Obviously, people, if they're interested in the industry, they tend to leave the area. So, what we're trying to do is essentially prove to people that we can kickstart a movie industry up here,” he said.
Watson, who moved to Cochrane with Girgis in 2020 after a hunting trip to the area, has been an executive producer for over 15 years.
“I was born and raised in Colorado and then my family moved to the Los Angeles area. I went to university in Chicago and then after nine years there, I moved to Amsterdam and lived there for 11 years and then moved to Canada in 2017,” she said.
Watson has previously been head of production for VICE Netherlands and was responsible for starting Nike’s We Own The Night in Amsterdam.
Girgis, who is a first-generation-born Egyptian Palestinian, grew up all over southern Ontario.
“I actually spent like a quarter century as an enterprise technology solutions consultant, and a few years ago switched careers into the performing arts,” he said.
Chivonne Michelle, an Afro-Indigenous Canadian actress who will be a lead in the film, was one of Girgis’ instructors at the Atlantic Acting School in New York, he said.
“We got on so well that we became friends and she's agreed to do this project, which I think is huge. Like she's going to be actually one of the main playable characters in an upcoming video game from a really big house to who I cannot mention, and the release is the same month that we're filming,” he said.
“One of the things that we're doing that was important for Chivonne is we're going make sure that we get the movie subtitled in Cree. We're making it for this community, as a part of this community, and we want everyone in the community to be able to enjoy it and access it.”
Watson and Girgis made an appearance at Tuesday night’s Cochrane council meeting to talk about the upcoming film and received tremendous support from council.
The film industry is on the rise in Northern Ontario.
Last year, the first feature film entirely shot in Timmins — My Animal — made its debut on the big screen. Crave TV's Shoresy is filmed in Sudbury and has been picked up for a third season.
For more information, visit the film’s Instagram page @theoddsmakersmovie.
