Imagine making your first feature film for $250,000 and being nominated to compete with filmmakers
like David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, and Xavier Dolan at the Canadian Screen Awards. The team
behind Cast No Shadow don’t have to imagine it. They did it.

Set and shot in Newfoundland with support from Telefilm Canada’s Micro-Budget Production Program,
the lyrical, cinematic film – in no small part thanks to cinematographer Scott McClellan – is a captivating
coming-of-age story about one wild and tumultuous summer in the life of thirteen-year-old Jude Traynor
(Percy Hynes White) as he uses his imagination to navigate through delinquency and family difficulties.
Jude fantasizes that his troubles are caused by a hermitic troll who lives in a cave and can be bribed with
gold. “The gold represents both the power of Jude’s imagination and also his ability to transform,” says
Christian Sparkes. “He is elevating bone and garbage in the same way he wishes to be elevated and
this is a beautiful and heartbreaking idea to me.”

Screenwriter Joel Thomas Hynes recently completed the Cineplex Screenwriter’s Lab at the Canadian
Film Centre, and has two new feature films in development. For Cast No Shadow, he peeled bits and
pieces from a variety of his works to craft Cast No Shadow, but the core is his book Say Nothing, Saw
Wood. “You know, I’ve hung around with versions of this story my whole life,” says Hynes, “so you’d
think I would have come at it with a kind of earned authority that would have been bothersome to a
director with the type of mandate that Christian had, but his vision was different once again and I
recognized his ability to see it executed, and in order to do that you have to let go of a
lot of your own bullshit.”

Fresh from a six-award sweep at The Atlantic Film Festival in September 2014 – including Best Atlantic Feature, Best Atlantic Director, and Best Atlantic Screenwriter – Cast No Shadow is now up for four Canadian Screen Awards nominations: Best Motion Picture (Chris Agoston, Allison White, and Sparkes), Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design (Xavier Georges), Adapated Screenplay (Hynes), and Achievement in Music – Original Score (Jeffrey Morrow). “The days and weeks following the announcement have been great,” says Sparkes. “I’ve gotten emails and well wishes from pretty much everyone I know in film and otherwise, congratulating the team. I went to Toronto to meet with several top agents last week, and I’ve been meeting with producers and talking to distributors. It’s been wild.”

The news took a while to sink in, but, once it did, the team’s excitement kicked into high gear. Who wouldn’t be
excited about potentially sharing a table with Canadian icon David Cronenberg? “A friend of mine who was at
the awards last year told me we’d have a table right up front since we’re up for the biggest award of the night,”
says Sparkes. “Rubbing elbows with the Cronenberg and what not. I wonder if he’s sick of hearing about how
awesome The Fly is?”

“A film isn’t an easy endeavour, and it’s fiercely competitive world,” says White, “so to receive a nomination
alongside Cronenberg and the like really validates the work you’re doing. But also, when you make films,
all you ever want is for people to see them, and that is incredibly hard to do as a low-budget independent
Canadian film.”

The low budget, and ambitious 31 shooting locations, were not only a challenge for the producers, but also
for the production team. Georges’ nomination was earned under tight constraints in the Art Department.
“Succeeding in delivering the ambiance, the textures, the frame, in such conditions calls upon all your
experience from A to Z,” says Georges. “You have to be focused at all times to not drift and explode the
budget or start cutting corners and loose all the detailing needed.”

Cast No Shadow will appear in select theatres in spring 2015, including the the Mt. Pearl Cineplex theatre on April 3rd,
By that time, Sparkes and White might already have funding in place for their next feature.

“The next feature is a self contained thriller that takes place over a single night in a small town, more or less
in real time, with only a handful of actors,” says Sparkes. “The central character is a middle aged, middle
class man who is pushed to his mental and physical limits in order to protect his son.”

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Photo by Joel Upshall/The Overcast