TFS Grads Get Opportunity of a Lifetime During Cannes Film Festival

Just days after attending their graduation from the Toronto Film School, Rafaela Scully and Carolyn Reznik will board a plane for the French Riviera; destined for an opportunity some filmmakers wait a lifetime for.

At just 24 and 19 years old respectively Scully and Reznik are heading to the Cannes International Film Festival to take part in the American Pavilion Student Program. But, that’s not all.

In addition, the short film they created while studying Film Production at the Toronto Film School, The Silent Musician, has been selected to screen in the Cannes Short Film: Short Film Corner under the American Pavilion banner.

“I don’t feel like it has sunk in yet,” said Scully. “I think it will hit me on May 9, the day before we leave.”

This incredible opportunity came about after a Los Angeles based representative from the renowned American Pavilion approached Christopher Lane, the Coordinator of the Toronto Film School’s Film Production Diploma program, to discuss the possibility of Toronto Film School students participating in the American Pavilion Student Program at the Festival de Cannes and the Marché du Film.

After a detailed application process, and some tense time waiting, the women learned that they, along with a third classmate Steve Williams, had been accepted as volunteers for the American Pavilion at Cannes.

The American Pavilion is the centre of activity at the Cannes International Film Festival for the American film community. The Pavilion serves as a hospitality and communications hub for the thousands of Americans attending the Cannes Film Festival and the Marché du Film.

“The American Film Pavilion is the premier pavilion as far as the industry goes,” Lane said, “It has restaurants and bars, meeting rooms, places to charge your laptops and phones.”

As participants in the American Pavilion Student Program, Scully and Reznik will have a unique experience and unparalleled access to both the Festival and Market.

The women will volunteer for about five hours each day, doing anything from ripping tickets to serving drinks or assisting world famous industry people. For the remainder of the day they are free to go to the convention centres, listen to round table discussions or socialize and meet people.

“Being at this festival is really a once in a lifetime, career changing opportunity,” Reznik said. “I feel like I can learn a lot and experience a lot. I would never pass that up.”

In addition to taking all they can in and networking, Scully said she wants to take the opportunity to show the industry there are great up-and-coming film makers coming out of Canada.

And the women will have a legitimate opportunity to do that, because not only were they accepted as volunteers, but also their film, The Silent Musician, was chosen to screen in the Short Film Corner during the Cannes Film Festival.

According to the Cannes website, the Short Film Corner, a professional area in the “Cannes Court Métrage“, meant for meeting people, exchanging ideas and promoting films.

“The Short Film Corner is a physical section of the Cannes Film Festival where people can go online and see the accepted films,” Reznik explained. “There are different categories as part of the Short Film Corner and one of the categories is the American Pavilion where they strictly show short films that get accepted through the American Pavilion and ours was one of them.”

Scully wrote, directed and produced The Silent Musician, while Rezink served as the co-producer and the director of photography. The films executive producers are Scully’s parents, Richard and Pamela Scully and Christopher Lane and Rick Bennett from the Toronto Film School.

The Silent Musician is about a young journalist named Jack who is chasing the unbelievable life story of Yousef, a retired restaurant musician with a complicated and heartbreaking past. The film explores the importance of valuing the things that are important in life, and not those things that can disappear overnight.

The Silent Musician, which runs 17 minutes long, is the first short film these two young women made. It started as Scully’s short film pitch in her fourth term at Toronto Film School.

At the Toronto Film School, Film Production students can submit their packages for pitches for a short film and a selection of those pitches are invited to present their pitch to a board.

“To get invited into the room to make a physical pitch, they had to do exceptional work,” Lane said. “We recognized that they had put together a crew that could do this and they put together a script that we recognized would work. They had, ‘All The Right Stuff,’ to quote the movie.”

Scully’s script was “green-lit” by the school, meaning they got the go-head from the school to shoot the film. The Silent Musician was shot in the women’s fifth term in locations around Toronto including Scully’s apartment in downtown Toronto, Woodbine Beach and in Yorkville.

“We had a 32-person crew and almost everyone we used were Toronto Film School graduates or students,” Scully said, adding that they also had a number of faculty members helping them by giving advice and assisting with audio.

The entire film was completed on a budget of less then $5,000.

“If we didn’t have the school and didn’t have access to their equipment and their help in getting permits (to shoot) it would have cost a lot more,” Scully said.

In fact, Lane estimates, The Silent Musician would have cost in the area of $70,000 to make.

The Silent Musician was edited and completed in their sixth term at Toronto Film School and Lane said he is extremely proud of the work the women did on their film and has no doubt they will represent the school well at Cannes.

“These women carry themselves as much older souls then others their age,” Lane said. “They are very prepared, very professional… they are not only great representatives for their film, they are great representative of our school and of our country and young women. They are good to go out on that world stage.”

The Silent Musician will also be shown in Toronto during the Toronto Film School Festival of Films in September.

Visit Rafaela Scully’s Website here.

Click here to find out more about the Toronto Film School and its programs.