Film ‘Tazed’ to depict Robert Dziekanski story

See also the Utopia Pictures TAZED website.

March 3, 2010
Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Toronto Star

A Vancouver film company plans to start shooting in June for their $1.5 million movie on the life and death of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after being Tasered at Vancouver Airport.

“As Canadian writers, we tend to shy away from really important stories,” said Laurence Keane, the director and writer of the film Tazed.

As a story consultant, Keane has read and analyzed Canadian movie scripts. “A lot of the stuff was entertaining and that’s fine, but they didn’t strike me as being very important.”

“As a real story” the death of Dziekanski on Oct. 14, 2007, “is far more fascinating than anything I could ever imagine.”

Dziekanski, who spoke no English, spent 12 hours wandering in confusion around the airport while his mother, Zofia Cisowski, waited outside and then returned home to Kamloops. He was shot with Tasers five times by RCMP officers 24 seconds after they encountered him, an incident filmed by passenger Paul Pritchard. A two-year inquiry harshly criticized the RCMP, including “considerable and significant discrepancies in the detail and accuracy of the recollection of the event.”

Tazed will take a “non-linear” approach to Dziekanski’s story, said producer Elvira Lount who, with Keane, runs Utopia Pictures.

“It will be a drama based totally on the public record,” said Lount. The only documentary footage will be Pritchard’s video. Cisowski has been “very supportive” of the project.

Telefilm Canada has already financed script drafts. Lount and Keane are hopeful they will also help fund the film, which will include a cast of about 50 actors.

“How could this happen in Canada? Why did it happen? That’s what intrigues me,” said Keane. “As I compiled information and wrote the script, I had a little sticky on my computer with the word, ‘why.’ Everything relates to that.”

Uptopia Films “tends to get involved in social issue films,” said Lount. The story of Robert Dziekanski is one that, “in a security conscious age, people think, “This could happen to me.’ It has a universal resonance.”

As well as Tazed and three other films in development, the company has four feature films in distribution.