Brendan Fletcher in Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses

Toronto director Jeremy Podeswa (Eclipse) says his second feature, The Five Senses, addresses the alienation induced by sensory overload in contemporary western culture. The film tells five interconnected stories in which characters cross each others’ paths without meeting, and each story is refracted through one of the five senses. All of the film’s tales, ultimately, are about the search for romantic fulfillment. Characters include a young widow unable to manage her grief, a troubled teen voyeur, an older woman returning from a European vacation followed by her new young lover, and a doctor powerless to reverse his own incipient deafness. A drama about a missing child winds up touching the lives of all these urban romantics.

"[The film] is about people who are emotionally blocked freeing themselves sufficiently to find intimacy," says Podeswa. "The child is a symbol of what’s missing in their lives." Podeswa, 36, has a directing M.F.A. from the American Film Institute and is a fixture of the Toronto film scene. (Each fall he can be spotted conducting Q&A’s at the Toronto International Film Festival.) Eclipse, his first collaboration with producer Camelia Frieberg, went to Sundance and New Directors/New Films in 1995. Podeswa’s screenplay for The Five Senses was invited to the Rotterdam CineMart and the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab the following January. Frieberg, who also produces Atom Egoyan’s films, sealed six-figure financing for Senses last summer from a combination of Canadian institutional and private investors, including Alliance and the CBC, as well as a German presale. Podeswa expects to complete the film by Spring, and then he and Frieberg will reteam on Minus Time, an adaptation of the Catherine Bush novel about the adolescent daughter of a female astronaut.

Cast: Pascale Bussieres, Richard Clarkin, Nadia Litz, Daniel MacIvor, Mary-Louise Parker, Molly Parker, Gabrielle Rose, Tara Rosling, Philippe Volter. Crew: Producers, Camelia Frieberg, Jeremy Podeswa; Screenwriter/Director, Podeswa; Cinematographer, Greg Middleton; Production Designer, Taavo Soodor; Editor, Wiebke Von Carolsfeld. Contact: Camelia Frieberg, Five Senses Productions, 14 Palmerston Gardens, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6G 1V9. Tel: (416) 588-3544, Fax: (416) 588-6300.

Cement - Adrian Pasdar
Daughter of Suicide - Dempsey Rice
The Dream Catcher - Ed Radtke
The Five Senses - Jeremy Podeswa
Harlem Aria - William Jennings
Jump - Justin McCarthy
The Opportunists - Tim Perell
Smut - David Wendell
Why Love Doesn’t Work - Julie Davis