It's a script Canadian filmmakers are only too familiar with. They spend years making a low-budget film. They get good-to-great responses on the festival circuit. And then comes the anti-climax: the film's theatrical release, which is invariably met with little fanfare, an occasional "drive-by review" - in which a Canadian critic lambastes the entire Canadian film milieu on the basis of this one feature - and the movie closes after a maximum of two weeks.

That was the scenario facing the makers of These Girls, John Hazlett's 2005 sex comedy (made for just under $2 million) that picked up some great notices at the Toronto International Film Festival, and then was released through Seville Pictures only to fizzle at the box office. In its opening week, it took in under $20,000 on 21 screens and disappeared soon thereafter.

But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity: These Girls found an enthusiastic audience on DVD.

"We all know the story with Canadian films," says Andrew Noble, the film's coproducer. "We have this tiny market spread out over a huge territory."

Noting that Quebec is its own special case - a distinct culture and enthusiastic public support for local films has helped the province build up its industry in the past decade - Noble says the rest of Canada remains a tough place to sell a movie - that is, until the DVD release.

"When the theatrical [release] happened for These Girls, no one knew it was opening," Noble recalls. "That market - where you're competing with all of these American films that have Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood behind them - is very difficult to penetrate."

But, he adds, "the DVD market is much more open. When we came out on DVD, suddenly we were in several thousand stores across Canada. Canadian distributors of DVDs are often working with larger U.S. distributors: Alliance Atlantis works with Universal, and Seville works with Warner."

In the case of These Girls, Seville's title was released along with Warner's other releases of that week.

"Having the Canadian distributor piggyback with the larger American distributor makes good sense," says Noble. "It allows the smaller distributor to reduce costs while increasing their market power."

This means that in major DVD rental outlets - from Blockbusters to mom-and-pop operations - small Canadian films have the placement their creators have so longed for in the cinemas: a spot right beside big-budget Hollywood fare.

These Girls has the benefit of a supporting performance by U.S. actor David Boreanaz, who, due to his work on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, had a built-in cult following.

"When the film came out on DVD, fans were talking about it online, which created a new buzz around it," says Noble. "Three months after the film came out in cinemas, no one had heard of it nor seen it. But when it was on DVD, people were coming up to us and saying they'd seen it and commented on how much they'd liked it."