Film festival goes for the Litz

Nadia Litz has done the LA thing.

But the 25-year-old Winnipeg-born actress still prefers Canada, and has quickly become one of this country’s fastest rising stars.

Litz, who will be a guest at this weekend’s North Bay Film Festival, created a stir as a voyeuristic babysitter in Jeremy Podwesa’s The Five Senses.

An American distributor picked up the Canadian film and that’s when Litz decided to try her fortunes in Hollywood.

“There was all this hype and buzz about the film so I went down there and got a manager and agent, and lived there for a year and a half,” Litz said in a telephone interview from her Toronto home.

“I still go to LA for pilot season, but I like Toronto much more. It’s a great city, unlike LA, which is totally uncreative.”

One of 25 to watch for
Litz has been invited to the North Bay Festival to introduce her romantic comedy Love That Boy, which Variety magazine called “stylish, funny and well-acted.”

“I play a 22-year-old girl who inadvertently falls in love with a 14-year-old boy,” said Litz, who began acting at 10 in a Manitoba Theatre Centre presentation of A Christmas Carol.

She also has a scene with American actor John Turturo in Fear X, directed by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn.

"I was visiting my mother in Winnipeg and we were at a restaurant, and the filmmakers came up to me and offered me this role," Litz said.

"They didn't even know I was an actress but said they liked my face. So that was my sort of Lana Turner discovery thing."

While not yet a household name, Litz was declared one of 25 Canadians under 25 to watch for in the new millennium by MacLean’s magazine.

Two Oscar nominations
Five Canadian films in all will be shown at the North Bay festival, led by Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand’s sequel to his Decline of the American Empire.

The Quebec-made film has already garnered two Oscar nominations.

Blair Haynes, of the Toronto-based Film Circuit, which is providing the movies to festival organizer North Bay Film, said those attending will have a chance to see some of the best Canadian cinema in years.

“Falling Angels is a great Canadian comedy which made the Canadian Top 10 list in 2003, and I absolutely loved it,” Haynes said.

“As well we’ll also be showing My Life Without Me, Sarah Polley’s new film, which Variety magazine absolutely loved.”

The Battle of Toronto
The National Film Board of Canada documentary The Last Round: Ali vs Chuvalo closes out the festival.

It recounts what happened in the days leading up to March 29, 1966, when George Chuvalo, a local hero from working-class Toronto, took on the greatest fighter in history, Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammed Ali.

The film, which was the winner of a special jury prize at the Hot Docs 2003 festival in Toronto, contains archival footage from what became known as the Battle of Toronto, held at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Passes for the festival are $30 for North Bay Film members and $35 to the general public. Individual films are $8 each. For more info got to the North Bay Film web site.