5Q: Hussain Amarshi - on buying the best film at TIFF

Hussain Amarshi doesn’t look like the sort of guy who would be entirely done with the Toronto International Film Festival gala scene. With his black-framed glasses propped up by heavy brows and a dollop of silver streaked hair, the 50-year-old founder and CEO of Mongrel Media – Canada’s largest art-house film distributor – looks like someone who rolls out of bed ready to sip wine at industry parties while filmmakers try to court him with their abstract ideas about the future of indie films. “Parties don’t really do anything for me anymore,” Amarshi told Yahoo Canada Finance. “But that’s part of the business.”

The business he speaks of is Mongrel’s role in connecting audiences with films. Essentially, a distributor buys the rights to a film from a studio, and in turn, supplies and sells the screening privileges to a company like Cineplex Inc. 

It seems ironic coming from Amarshi, given Mongrel is known for throwing down the hippest yearly ragers at TIFF while envious non-industry plebes vie for a chance to pocket napkins used by celebrity attendees.

But this year he might need to make an exception, as it’s a big one for Mongrel.

The indie film distributor – which brought films like Michael Haneke’s Oscar award winning French drama Amour and Richard Linklater’s epic Boyhood to Canada – is turning 20, has 19 films showing at TIFF and is touting its freshly launched international distribution wing.

We chatted with Amarshi about the allure of sitting in a dark room with strangers, the gamble of acquiring movies and the one that got away.

So if it’s not the parties what excites you most about TIFF?

What I look forward to is seeing an audience really react well to a film that you believe in. When we had Deepa Mehta's Water, it was an opening night film but not your clear-cut opening night film. It was the first time they’d shown a film with subtitles on an opening night and I don’t think I’ve seen any others since then. The audiences on opening nights are usually a lot of sponsors and corporate people, not the usual demographic for these kinds of independent films. So seeing them be really moved by a film is unmatched. Obviously the parties are a part of the business. You can’t see all the 250 films so you rely on your friends, colleagues and industry people to get an idea of what is best, what is worth seeing and what is not worth seeing. We all get in one room and get to talk. Some people get drunk and they talk more. It’s the primordial twitter.

Outside of the coveted rager, what does Mongrel have on the go at TIFF?

We have three galas and special presentations with several big films premiering over the six or seven days. Those 19 films premiering at TIFF will be released theatrically in the next several months, but we also have other films that were not ready or we didn’t submit that are in our pipeline. At the same time we're always looking for new films that we can position for next year. We have been doing our research and have identified a couple. We have four people from the company who will be constantly watching films for potential acquisitions.

What’s that process look like?

There are certain films that will be absolutely ‘must have’ for which we will try to make a play right away if possible. Sometimes it’s not possible to carve out Canada in the North American context. If a large U.S. company wants a particular film they tend to buy North American rights and then we have to speak to them in order to get Canadian rights. For instance we have an output deal with Sony Classics so anything they pick up we automatically get the rights for those films. 

What makes a ‘must-have’ film?

There's nothing in particular – we're looking for great films. The ultimate goal is to find a film that will define the independent film industry. Last year in Berlin I bought Boyhood, which was an absolutely fantastic film. It’s playing in cinemas now and will continue to be in theaters for a while and will likely be in the running for the Oscars next year. We are looking for films that we can buy at the right price and position them for the Canadian marketplace. In some of those cases the films are going straight to video on demand, which is a perfectly legitimate and vibrant sort of space.

Speaking of which, how have streaming services like Netflix and the birth of binge watching impacted the industry?

Netflix for us has been great in that it has opened up a whole new platform for people to watch films. At the same time, the magic of going to see a film in a cinema with several hundred strangers in the same room and finding that commonality and that humanity that you find when you see movies -- you’re crying or laughing and so effected by it at the same time -- is unmatchable. You can’t get it any other way besides seeing it in a dark room with a bunch of strangers. That still drives the business.

What about physical DVDs though, obviously it cuts into sales?

When I started DVDs were just coming out. The cost of manufacturing and optioning those DVDs was enormous. Not every film was viable to put on DVD and it took awhile for prices to come down. Think about VHS, if you can remember they were sold for $100 at first so the market was only a rental market. It’s changing but the DVD is still a viable market. Not everybody has high speed Internet, not everybody is getting Netflix or cable. The video on demand market has become a significant force but it hasn’t overtaken DVD revenues. Look at cottage country, the mom and pop rental shops are still doing well.

What happens when you invest in a dud?

You go on a variety of matrixes; you figure out what will make sense but sometimes the market changes or you make a mistake. I’ve made several bad picks of course but I don’t even know where to begin and I probably wouldn’t name them; the creative world is a risky business. We take a financial risk in that when we buy a film, we put up a minimum guarantee right up front. In terms of guarantees, we have paid anywhere from zero to $600,000. We have to assess what the best and worst case scenarios are. Sometimes films fall through. Sometimes the market is competitive with a bunch of other films opening the same weekend or maybe you have beautiful weather on a weekend after a week of rain. Watching a film is not a life and death type of decision. If they choose not to go that weekend and you’re opening a particularly big film, you are screwed. 

What about not getting a film you really wanted? What’s the one that got away?

Many years ago there was a Russian film called Prisoner of the Mountains and I still think about it to this day. At that point TIFF was taking place at the Sheraton Center and I remember meeting with the director Sergei Bodrov, a beautiful man and the film was absolutely gorgeous. It was about the Russians and the Chechen war and I met Sergei and the sales company, which I also knew well as they’d done my first film, so there was a link – we had a relationship. And yet because of the financing and all that stuff they wanted more money then I was ready to pay and they went with someone else. Somehow the film didn’t get the support it deserved and I felt sorry for them because it was such a beautiful film.

Just because you believe in a beautiful film it doesn’t mean the audience will necessarily come for it. It was a little heartbreaking. That’s a danger in our business. New distribution companies will come because there’s a gap and they think there’s money to be made and there is but some will overspend on certain films and they go under. Those films become orphans and it’s really hard to break after that happens.