The nine films in TIFF2006's Canada First! program - a showcase for rookie Canuck feature directors, or those presenting at TIFF for the first time - are driven by misfit characters in false or contrived environments.

"A sense of displacement and confusion, and people being left behind - and how they interact and create environments - are themes that reverberate through Canada First!," notes Steve Gravestock, the festival's associate director of Canadian programming.

Cheech, the first feature by Quebec TV director Patrice Sauvé, begins with Ron (Patrice Robitaille), the unhappy owner of an escort agency, lying in the snow, listening to relaxation tapes that advise him to picture himself on a beach.

The film, based on an acclaimed play, chronicles what happens to people in Ron's world on the day his little black book is stolen. The despondent characters include his right-hand man Maxime (Maxime Dénommée), suicidal call girl Stephanie (Fanny Mallette), lonely Olivier (François Létourneau), his preoccupied girlfriend Jenny (Anick Lemay) - whom he doesn't know is an escort - and his pathetic neighbor Alexis (Maxim Gaudette).

Montrealer Létourneau penned both the play and the movie, produced by Go Films' Nicole Robert.

Aspiring to direct features since studying film at Concordia University, Sauvé says he chose this work because "it was a happy mixture of comedy and tragedy."

Pointing out that the TV shows he has directed - most notably the multiple-Gemeaux award-winning La Vie, la vie and Grande ourse -­ have been cited for their cinematic approach, Sauvé says it wasn't a big leap to do a feature film.

"Making the shift from television to film, I wanted the film to look big and... to give a scope to the characters' day that was bigger than life," he notes.

Financed with the help of Telefilm Canada, SODEC, The Harold Greenberg Fund, Radio-Canada and distributor Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm, the $4.5-million Cheech opens in Quebec on Oct. 6. It will be a mid-sized release of 30 to 50 prints, according to Vivafilm's EVP of acquisitions and sales Patrick Roy, who adds that plans for an English-Canada release hinge on reaction at TIFF.

A Stone's Throw, Genie Award-winning producer Camelia Frieberg's feature directorial debut, is a psychological drama she wrote with Victoria's Garfield Lindsay Miller about eco-activist Jack (Kris Holden-Ried), who arrives on the rural Nova Scotia doorstep of his long-lost sister Olivia (Kathryn MacLellan).

"They both have to come to terms with how they are dealing with the past, and [the film is about] the conscious choices we make about how we live on the planet, and how we give and receive love," says Frieberg. The film also stars Lisa Ray (Water).

The inclusion of A Stone's Throw at TIFF brings Frieberg full circle. "I owe my film career to the festival," she proclaims.

While covering the early days of TIFF as a journalist, she interviewed filmmaker Charles Burnett and ended up driving to Los Angeles in "a car that broke down about 15 times" to work as assistant director on his low-budget 1983 film My Brother's Wedding.