Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival’s Comedy Conference (July 23-25) will welcome Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover, to receive Comedy Director of the Year Award while Etan Cohen will receive the Comedy Writer of the Year Award.

Cohen (Tropic Thunder, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa) will also join Tami Sagher (30 Rock), Jeremy Garelick (The Hangover), and Dan Sterling (Sarah Silverman Program) on the panel Comedy’s Next Generation of Writers.

Heavy.com’s Simon Assaad, Funnyordie.com’s Mike Farah and The Inappropriate Yoga Guy’s Avi Rothman will speak on The Web: Comedy’s New Wild West.

An adult animation panel will host speakers including Dino Stamatopoulos (Moral Orel), Tommy Blacha (Metalocalypse) and Vernon Chatman (Wonder Showzen and Xavier: Renegade Angel).

Other speakers on various panels include Mandate’s Nathan Kahane and producer Tom McNulty.

The Just For Laughs Film Festival (July 10-27) has a programme of features including Judd Apatow’s Funny People; Broken Lizard’s The Slammin’ Salmon; Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad; Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, Etienne Chatiliez’s Agathe Clery; William Philbin’s More than Me; Margaret Cho’s Beautiful, and Albert Nerenberg’s Laughology.

The festival opens with the Canadian premiere of French hit OSS 117: Lost In Rio and closes with writer Ken Scott (Seducing Doctor Lewis) making his directorial debut with Les doigts croches.

Just For Laughs will also show more than 125 short films from 23 countries.

The festival is adding a new venue at the NFB CineRobotheque in addition to the Cinema Imperial and Place des Arts.


Topics