PEI

Kooperman, P.E.I. shot film, debuts at Atlantic Film Festival

A feature film from Prince Edward Island is making its world premier at the Atlantic Film Festival Saturday in Halifax.

Comedy is about a comic book store owner who must face his high school bully and become his own hero

Dylan Miller, Andrew Murray, and Carl Peterson in Kooperman. (Tess Marie Garneau)

A feature film from Prince Edward Island is making its world premier at the Atlantic Film Festival Saturday in Halifax.

Kooperman is a comedy about a struggling comic book store owner who must face his high school bully and become his own hero to save his store.

The film was shot and set on P.E.I. and all the songs in the movie are by Island musicians, including Catherine MacLellan.

Periscope Pictures employed 85 people during production, 79 of them were Islanders.

It was selected from a nationwide pool of projects as one of 15 recipients of the Telefilm Canada Microbudget Production Fund.

Islander Harmony Wagner of Periscope Pictures is the director and co-writer. She hopes the film will encourage people to invest in the local film industry.

"We don't have oil. We don't have forests. What we have is people," she said. "I hope that we can grow this industry because I want to keep all these amazing people here."

Wagner said she also wants to help find new stories.

"Anne of Green Gables will not last forever. She's becoming less and less pertinent over time and we need to create new intellectual property that makes people attracted to come visit us," she said.

The movie debuts at 9:45 p.m. at Cineplex Cinemas Park Lane.

Kooperman will open the Charlottetown Film Festival on Oct. 16 at City Cinema.