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To Cannes with film – Metro US

To Cannes with film

A Halifax filmmaker has won a trip to the 2010 Cannes Film Festival after impressing France’s consulate general to the Atlantic Provinces with his first three short films.

Daniel Boos, 21, was born in Toronto and raised in Halifax. The third-year University of King’s College student “single-handedly won over the jury members,” the consulate general said in a press release announcing the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Youth Competition. “His winning compilation film reel showed extraordinary professionalism, technical skill and an artistic flair of considerable talent.”

Boos started making a name for himself at 16, when he won two Viewfinders prizes for his environmental documentary Ecoblivion. He followed that with Break It Down, addressing the environment with a satirical lens, and Blue Ruin, a high school drama about a girl traumatized by an abusive ex-lover.

“Filmmaking has been a central passion of mine ever since I was a small child. Initially, it was just a pastime. I would get my friends together and shoot a movie,” Boos said in an email interview.

It soon became much more serious as he began to contemplate what he wanted to say in cinema. “Filmmaking took on a new meaning for me as it became more and more a vehicle, an outlet, for my own thoughts and opinions,” he says.

It will be Boos’s first trip to Cannes. He’ll stay with about 20 other winners from around the globe. The group will get to attend screenings, mix with professional filmmakers and attend workshops. They’re tasked with producing a film diary about the experience.

“I am simply blown away by the fact that I have been granted this unfathomable opportunity in the first place — it already far exceeds any expectations I originally had,” Boos says.

When he returns from France, he plans to finish his undergraduate degree and focus on becoming a full-time filmmaker.

“It is the one passion in my life which never loses its appeal. I just can’t see myself being happy pursuing anything else,” he says. “After Cannes, who knows? Anything’s possible. But one thing’s for sure — my place is in filmmaking.”