INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
MEASURES FOR A FUNERAL
Director: Sofia Bohdanowicz
Canada / 2025 / Colour / 142' / English; Turkish subtitles
Screenplay: Sofia Bohdanowicz, Deragh Campbell
Music: Olivier Alary
Cinematography: Nikolay Michaylov
Editing: Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, Sofia Bohdanowicz
Cast: Deragh Campbell, María Dueñas, Melanie Scheiner, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maxim Gaudette, Eve Duranceau, Eileen Davies, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Producer: Aonan Yang, Andreas Mendritzki, Sofia Bohdanowicz
Production Company: Green Ground Productions, Maison du Bonheur, Silent Tower
World Rights: Totem Films
Premiering worldwide in Toronto, Music for a Funeral follows young academic Audrey Benac on a delicate journey into both music and her own past. As Audrey traces the footsteps of Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow, who lived in the early 20th century, she also confronts unresolved emotions in her own life. This exploration takes her from Toronto to Oslo, through archives and memories, from silence to buried feelings. While striving to revive Parlow’s lost music, Audrey is shadowed step by step by her dying mother’s unfulfilled dreams and the shadows of her own inner world.
Awards
- 2025 Barcelona-Sant Jordi International Film Festival Critics Award, ACCEC Critics Award
Sofia Bohdanowicz
Sofia Bohdanowicz is a filmmaker based in Toronto and a graduate of York University’s Film Production Master’s program. She participated in the Berlinale Talents and TIFF Talent Accelerator programs. Her films have screened at prestigious festivals including BFI London, New York, Berlin, Locarno, Toronto, and HotDocs. Her debut feature Never Eat Alone won the Emerging Filmmaker Award at Vancouver in 2016. In 2017, she received the Jay Scott Prize from the Toronto Film Critics Association, and in 2018, she was nominated for the Rogers Award for Maison du bonheur. Her third feature, MS Slavic 7, premiered in Berlin and was screened at the Harvard Film Archive. Her fourth feature, A Woman Escapes, received a CNAP honorable mention at FIDMarseille. Her short film Point and Line to Plane won Best International Short Film at the Las Palmas Gran Canaria Festival.