Little Lorraine could lead to big things for Cape Breton's film industry

movie about a small Cape Breton town caught in international drug smuggling operation could draw global film productions to the island

Editor’s note: As interest in the film industry grows, our Cape Breton Film series explores the past, present and future of the film industry on the island. In a strange case of art imitating life, a movie about a small Cape Breton town caught in the middle of an international drug smuggling operation has become the project local film industry advocates believe will draw global film productions to the island. Little Lorraine, a feature-length crime drama filmed at various locations in Cape Breton, has become the blueprint for made-in-the-Maritimes movies since premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, riding a wave of sold-out shows in Sydney into theatres across the country.

And Patrick Doyle, a 30-year veteran camera and Steadicam operator from North Sydney who has been loudly championing the local film industry since returning home in 2013, says that success is shining a much-needed spotlight on Cape Breton’s potential as a filmmaking hub. ‘TURNING POINT’ “I think Little Lorraine was the turning point.

I know it was the turning point,” says Doyle, who was a camera operator and shot additional photography on the Little Lorraine set. “And it just feels like everybody feels the change and feels the optimism and the momentum that we’ve been able to slowly build up. But now we’re that close to this becoming hopefully a more regular sort of occasion.”

Doyle, who has personally shot for studios like MGM, Disney and Warner Bros, co-founded the non-profit Unama’ki Motion Picture Co-operative in 2023. He has worked closely with Cape Breton Partnership film industry liaison Bill Culp and Screen Nova Scotia to lobby for the tax incentives needed to lure filmmakers to rural areas of the province like Cape Breton. Little Lorraine was the first project to utilize Nova Scotia’s new Distant Location Incentive, creating a perfect blueprint for future productions that want to take advantage of Cape Breton’s unique mix of rugged natural beauty, historical landmarks and industrial backdrops.

Equally as important, Little Lorraine has proven that Cape Breton is capable of providing the skilled workforce and welcoming communities producers are looking for. “We made the conditions right that they could make that movie here. And as anybody who’s been watching the news knows, Little Lorraine has become a huge hit locally and is being celebrated constantly locally because not only is it a great story, it was also made in Cape Breton,” says Doyle, whose goal is to have a sustainable, year-round film industry on the island so he and hundreds of others will no longer need to leave for work.

“And I’ve always said, if you make a project in a place where it actually happened, there is a magic because there’s a community buy-in. If there is anything you need, the people that are here are going to try to help you to make it happen because it’s still new, it’s exciting, and it offers so much to so many people in various matters like through earning a salary, through getting a walk-on background role, to getting a speaking line, to actually having a job where you live, which is what I’ve said for most of my career.

“It was nice when I moved back to Cape Breton in 2013, but God, I would love to be able to work where I live. And I think it’s going to start happening.” BREAKTHROUGH ROLE Shelley MacPhail is another film industry veteran who believes Little Lorraine was the big break Cape Breton needed.

A prominent Nova Scotia-based casting agent with Hennessey Casting, MacPhail recently joined Doyle and Culp for a panel discussion at CaperCon where they held up the success of Little Lorraine as an example for local people interested in entering the film industry. “We were pretty full, our panel on getting into the film business overall, but afterwards we had a table outside where we could answer one-on-one,” says MacPhail, who casts for major regional productions like From, We Were Liars, and The Institute. “And a lot of the folks were sitting down asking about how to get into acting, how to further their acting career.

And then, of course, if you just look at the amount of theatre actors we have on the island and the success going on at the (Highland Arts Theatre), there’s a lot of crossover there. And also, I know through Hennessy Casting how many people actually come from Cape Breton to work on shows in Halifax, so there’s a fair amount of folks here already in the business.” While MacPhail wasn’t directly involved with Little Lorraine, she knows first-hand how working on a film set, even in a minor background role, can ignite a passion in people.

EXTRA INSPIRATION Her own interest in the film industry began when her father, Dave MacPhail, worked as an extra on Margaret’s Museum when it was filmed in Glace Bay in 1994. “That was my first look at how that felt to your regular person to be on a film like that, you know,” she says. “My dad knows the history of Cape Breton inside and out, and therefore we all did.

And, I live out here in Glace Bay, pretty much in the neighbourhood of Margaret’s Museum, the film. And just to see what it does to a person to be able to see themselves on the screen like that, it’s very thrilling, and it gives a little bit of magic to someone’s life. So that’s what drew me in there.”

“When you see it happening and you see it growing around you, it does lend to people getting careers. It really does.” MacPhail says the growing interest in film inspired her and Hennessey Casting founder and owner Erin Hennessey to start the Cape Breton Casting Agency group on Facebook.

“People from here are signing up to there, and we’re posting the casting calls – even though we’re not casting them, we’re posting all the calls that come to the island just to make sure everybody’s connected and has the opportunity,” she says, noting that she anticipates more casting calls for filmed-in-Cape Breton projects as the new rural tax credit entices more filmmakers to the island. “Besides our very skilled crews in Nova Scotia, besides our beautiful landscapes, that film tax is a major lure for big production houses. So that’s attracting people to Cape Breton Breton Island, especially independent productions where the budget may be really tight and that little bit extra incentive on the Nova Scotia tax credit really helps productions to be able to pull it off in the way they want to.

“There’s an eye on Cape Breton in big part thanks to Little Lorraine, but also by the work being done by everyone to bring more light upon us.”