Best known for the Life of Pi, Martel’s We Ate the Children Last tells the fascinating tale of a violent counter-culture that develops after a radical medical procedure is used to treat patients with terminal diseases.

Director Andrew Cividino acquired the film rights last March.

“When I’m looking for the next story I want to tell, I buy an anthology,” said the 27-year-old Parkside Secondary School graduate. “I read We Ate the Children Last, and I loved it. Then I flipped back to the front (of the book) and saw Yann Martel, and I thought, ‘I’m doomed.’”

But through one of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend coincidences in life, Cividino was successful in his quest to purchase the story rights.

After 12 meticulously crafted drafts to adapt the story for television — a process the undaunted Cividino describes as “a lot of fun” — filming started during the G20 summit.

“We needed to shoot a riot scene, so what better place than to go to the G20 summit with a few actors?” said Cividino, explaining police officers were curious but cooperative once the group identified themselves as film-makers. “I did get a little tear gas and talc powder, but I got great footage, cop cars on fire, gas tanks exploding and people smashing things.”

Cividino doesn’t expect the short film for Bravo! to be complete until Christmas because of postproduction work and special effects that are needed to depict “the large dystopic world” that results when the digestive tract of pigs are transplanted into human beings.

Cividino and his crew, including partner Geoff Smart, will be filming every day until August in locales in and around Hamilton and Toronto.

The pair, both Dundas residents, hung out in completely different social circles until a mutual love of films brought them together in Grade 10.

“I had a really great drama teacher at Parkside,” said Cividino, “and my dad made the mistake of buying a video camera. Any project, say for English or science, that I could turn into a film, I did,”

While co-director Smart attended Concordia to study film-making; Cividino went to Ryerson.

After graduating in 2006 with honours, Cividino created a nationally distributed, award-winning public service announcement for the Ontario Film Review Board and was named Motorola’s Filmmaker of the Year after winning the TIFF/Motorola Motoreel competition.

He incorporated his own company, Film Forge Productions in 2007, and has produced and directed short films and commercials for cinema, television, the web and the big board at Yonge and Dundas Square in Toronto.

Cividino’s most recently completed film, Mud, is surfing the festival circuit starting with Montreal World, while he works on We Ate the Children Last.

Funding for We Ate the Children Last has been obtained through Bravo!, the Toronto Arts Council and Do It With Others (DIWO) fundraising. Cividion and his colleagues have built an on-line fan base, or DIWO, to help persuade individual patrons of the arts to make donations. Local businesses have also donated the use of their locations, and Martel, himself, has sweetened the pot by offering signed copies of We Ate the Children Last as perks for donors.

Cividino admits he makes a decent living through corporate and commericial work, but as yet there has been no “financial reward” to film-making. And rather surprisingly, his dream is not Hollywood fame and fortune.

“Maybe a Hollywood film in Canada. I have no desire to leave Canada. There is no need to leave Canada. We can make quality films here.”

For more information on We Ate the Children Last, visit indiegogo.com/watcl or www.weatethechildrenlast.com .