Toronto-based production company Sienna Films, producers of hip-hop title How She Move, are putting together two pictures with two Canadian screenwriters.

Sienna partners Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny are re-uniting with New Waterford Girl screenwriter Tricia Fish for a dark comedy about an eleven-year-olds’ love triangle, while David Vainola has adapted The Lizard Cage from the novel by Governor General Award-winning Canadian author Karen Connelly. The story is set in a Burmese prison matching a political prison with an orphan who has grown up in the jail.

Sereny and Kawaja, who will produce both pictures, are actively seeking directors for both. Hussain Amarshi’s Mongrel Media is onboard as the Canadian distributor of The Lizard Cage. Both projects have tapped development funds from Telefilm Canada.

As well as winning the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers, The Lizard Cage was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize and longlisted for the Impac Dublin Award. Vainola wrote the UK-Canada-South Africa television mini-series Diamonds, for which Sienna was the Canadian coproducer. Sienna turned heads at Sundance 2007 when they sold How She Move to Paramount Vantage.

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