Ontario-born director Andrew Cividino is experiencing a wide range of emotions as his first feature film, Sleeping Giant, premieres at the Cannes Film Festival.
“You’re going in just to do your test and make sure everything’s going to work and you realize all these people have shown up two hours before your film just to watch it,” Cividino said to The Canadian Press following the screening. “That’s a really humbling and terrifying experience… I was somewhere between nervous and (feeling) this kind of underwater, is-this-even-happening feeling. You are very fine-tuned to listening in to the people around you and how they’re responding. You know you can tell the difference between an audience that’s really restless and shifting and opening packages and one that is (not).
“Laughter is an easy indicator if it’s a comedy and we do have some humorous scenes – and you know that those scenes are going well because the audience is laughing along with you. But for the more dramatic material it’s harder to gauge and it’s sort of the absence of coughing and shifting that tells you: ‘I think it’s going well.’ But I don’t know.”
Sleeping Giant follows Adam who, while spending a boring summer on Lake Superior, falls in with two locals and begins attempting some risky stunts, which is brought to a whole new level with the arrival of pretty young Taylor. It will also be shown at this year’s TIFF.
Photo: Sleeping Giant/TIFF
