Passchendaele's long journey to TIFF glory

After over a decade in development, Paul Gross’s long-gestating war film Passchendaele is finally poised to make its debut in high style on September 4, as the Toronto International Film Festival’s opening night gala presentation.

The actor/writer/director’s passion project focuses on the titular WWI battle, the site of a crucial and brutal conflict for Canadian soldiers, and tells the harrowing tale of an injured, shell-shocked sergeant who finds love amidst the atrocities of war.

Initially fascinated as a teen by his grandfather’s war-time tales, it wasn’t until Gross was in his twenties that he began seriously thinking about how to tell the moving stories he'd heard about the Third Battle of Ypres.

But Gross’s labour of love encountered obstacles from the very beginning.

“At the time, I knew there was no way that we could finance it because these things are expensive and I wasn’t in a position where people would give me a lot of money,” he revealed to Cineplex.com.

“But I just knew it was one of those things that was going to take some time so I kept going back to it. It was like this precious watch I had tucked away and I’d pull it out and work on it a little bit at a time.”

It was only seven years ago, though, that he and co-producer Niv Fichman decided to seriously seek out financing for this visually ambitious, domestic production. Though he was resolute in his determination to get Passchendaele made, the long road from script to screen was riddled with severe doubt.

“It seemed absolutely impossible, at least in terms of the story I had written, that we could make [the film] because it’s just Canadian—there’s no foreign involvement. Usually in a film of this size, you have to involve other countries and it changes the story, inevitably," he said.

"And we just thought, well we have to do this as a Canadian story…and it took a long time. But I’m not sure what would have ever made me think, ‘Well, I’ll give it up.’”

Having been in development for what Gross himself calls a “ludicrously long time,” it doesn’t seem there could be a more fittingly dramatic, triumphant way for Passchendaele to be introduced to the movie-going masses than by headlining one of the world's most significant cultural events.

But Gross is pointedly selfless when describing what this particular distinction means, choosing instead to focus on the group effort that went into this protracted project.

“More than anything else, [opening TIFF is] a great testament to everybody that worked on this movie— and there were hundreds of people over the many, many, many years. That their efforts get this honoured spot… it’s very gratifying.”

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4-13.