La déesse des mouches à feu

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette : 2020
Goddess of the Fireflies

"It sounds like waves. Listen. Waves pushing a boat against a dock. Beautiful, isn't it? Like a tsunami. A giant tsunami." When Cat is high, life becomes a warm, poetic rush. First love, first sexual experiences and her parents' scorched-earth divorce combine to bring the 16-year-old to a turning point. In her new circle of friends, she encounters mescaline, which is known for inducing ecstatic states and soon rules Cat's everyday routine. Such deep intoxication helps to liberate her from the verbal and emotional brutality of conflicts at home, while her clique provides her with support and diversion. It's the mid-90s in provincial Canada – punk rock, Kurt Cobain's suicide and the Mia Wallace look are animating teens to try to get free themselves. An unflinching portrait of a maturing rebel, as strong and as weak as a lost goddess. Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette's feature premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2020.

Antigone

Sophie Deraspe : 2019

Following the murder of their parents, Antigone, her sister Ismène, her brothers Étéocle and Polynice, and their grandmother Ménécée find refuge in Montréal. They live a quiet modest life in a tiny apartment in a working-class neighbourhood. A straight-A student seemingly destined for greatness, Antigone is the glue that holds the family together. Tragedy strikes when Étéocle is wrongfully gunned down by police during the arrest of Polynice, a small-time drug dealer. Motivated by her sense of duty towards her family and fuelled by the memory she cherishes of her dead parents, Antigone decides to jeopardise her own future to preserve that of her family. Feeling the grip of power tightening around her, the teenage girl rejects the law of man and follows her own sense of justice, dictated by love and loyalty. Acutely exploring familial sacrifice, the burden of responsibility, and the nature of justice, this provocative and timely adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles reimagines the story of a woman's quest for justice as a commentary on the immigrant experience in ostensibly welcoming contemporary Canada. Sophie Deraspe's film was winner of the award for Best Canadian Feature Film when it premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2019.

Maudie

Aisling Walsh : 2016

Since her childhood Maud has suffered from a severe form of arthritis which has deformed her bones and makes almost every movement agony. When her brother sells their parents' home, the young woman has to move in with her mother in Nova Scotia. Maud is lonely but filled with a desire for life, driven by her great passion for painting. Desperate for more independence, she responds to an advert for a live-in housekeeper placed by fishmonger and social misfit, Everett. From this moment on, the two share everyday life in his little cottage. Gradually, they get to know each other and finally marry. Maud begins to decorate their home with her paintings and soon becomes something of a local celebrity. The colourful motifs on her postcards and small canvasses gain a reputation as far away as in New York and Washington. At some point, they even fill the taciturn Everett with pride. The sensitively told story of folk artist Maud Lewis who rebels against her own physical deterioration and finds happiness in her art. At the same time the film tells the tale of an unusual, understated love that blossoms in the austere landscape of Canada's Atlantic coastline. Aisling Walsh's feature premiered at Telluride Film Festival 2016.

Endorphine

André Turpin : 2015

Twelve-year-old Simone is a witness to the gruesome murder of her mother, a trauma that causes her increasingly to shut herself off from reality. Together with her cousin, she plays a game in which they suffocate each other until they faint. At the age of twenty, Simone works in a parking garage, where panic attacks and visions make her life unbearable. And in her sixties, as a professor of physics, Simone gives a lecture about how the senses deceive our view of reality. Continuously turning in circles, a beautifully filmed puzzle unfolds, a hypnotic mix of dream, nightmare and mystery, in which the lives of three women going by the name of Simone are linked together through time and space. André Turpin's feature premiered at Toronto Independent Film Festival 2015, and screened in the Voices section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Au temps des monstres

Sophie Farkas Bolla : 2015
When Monsters Were Real

It is said that long, long ago, the wild children were bestowed with the gift of eternal youth. But one day, one of them started growing up and according to legend, grew so much he turned into a monster. Ravenous, he ate the smallest children and spread terror in his wake. Forced to seek protection, the village chief decided to banish the children who had become too tall before they had a chance to transform. The forest emu would come to get them and escort them to the world of monsters, where they disappeared forever. Sophie Farkas Bolla's short premiered in the P'tits Loups programme at Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montréal 2015.

The Saver

Wiebke von Carolsfeld : 2015

Fern is a 16-year-old aboriginal girl. She lives with her mother, who works hard as a cleaning woman for well-off clients. When her mother dies of a sudden heart attack, Fern finds herself isolated from the world and runs away from social services. Inspired by a self-help book, she saves every penny, does every little job she can get, hoards anything she can find with some value. Her goal is to get rich, maybe even a millionaire, to escape her situation and a life like her mother's. Some people help, others try to sabotage her, but nothing can deter her. Rejecting victimhood, Fern mourns her mother in her own obstinate way, defying social expectations and reductive clichés. Wiebke von Carolsfeld's feature premiered in the Focus section at Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montréal 2015.

Les êtres chers

Anne Émond : 2015
Our Loved Ones

Back in 1978, in a small village in Bas-Saint-Laurent, Guy's tragic death is a shock for the Leblanc family. Protected by his well-intentioned siblings from the truth about his father's death, the sensitive David has grown into a loving husband and father of two, living a seemingly fulfilling life with his wife Marie. But as the years go by, his relationship with his wilder brother toughens and his kids grow into young adulthood. David starts to struggle with an insuppressible melancholia that gradually threatens to engulf him. Meanwhile, when his daughter Laurence begins to recognise herself in her father, she sees that she'll need to reckon with her emotional inheritance if she is to break the cycle and take on the future. Following a Québécois family over a thirty-year period, the story reveals the most profound complexities of love and loss as their effects are transmitted from one generation to the next. Anne Émond's second feature premiered in competition in the Concorso Cineasti del presente section at Locarno Film Festival 2015, and had its North American premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

Le dep

Sonia Bonspille Boileau : 2015

Lydia is a young Innu woman who works at her father's convenience store in a small First Nations community in rural Québec. One night, as she prepares to close up shop, a masked robber enters the store and holds her at gunpoint. This traumatic experience becomes even more troubling when Lydia discovers the identity of her assailant. Before long, Lydia is forced to make a decision that could impact the rest of her life as well as the lives of the people she loves. A psychological drama sensitively probing the difficulties facing the contemporary Innu community as well as the inner emotions of the young protagonist. Sonia Bonspille Boileau's feature debut premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2015.

Triptyque

Robert Lepage & Pedro Pires : 2013
Triptych

A meditation on the influence of language and voices on the destinies of three people. In Québec, Michelle leaves a psychiatric clinic and returns to her work in an antiquarian bookstore which subsequently becomes a space for her inner voices. In London, a German neurologist meets Michelle's sister, Marie, a jazz singer whose ability to speak is jeopardised by a brain tumour. Marie is one of Thomas's last patients. He is suffering from a hand tremor – the result of a taxing marriage. Back home in Montréal, Marie starts a new life together with Thomas. With the aid of dubbing actors and Super-8 footage of her late father, she begins obsessively to retrieve her forgotten memory of his voice. Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires's feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2013, and received a Special Mention by the Ecumenical Jury at Berlin International Film Festival 2014.

Félix et Meira

Maxime Giroux : 2014
Felix and Meira

A young married woman from Montréal's Orthodox Jewish community finds freedom from the strictures of her faith through her relationship with a young man who is mourning the death of his father. Meira is a young Hasidic Jewish wife and mother living in Montréal's Mile End district. Discontented with her marriage and life, she rebels secretly against her faith by listening to soul music and taking birth control pills. Secular francophone Félix is an eccentric and penniless loner living nearby, grieving over the recent death of his estranged father. Intrigued by Meira, Félix hopes her religious devotion will provide insight into his loss. Though she rebuffs him at first, they begin to meet in secret; a mutual affection soon arises, and she acquires a taste for life outside the strictures of her faith. As Meira's desire for change becomes harder for her to hide, and her husband becomes more suspicious, the tension between them builds. The tale of one woman's personal journey, her inner struggle for happiness, and the difficult choices she must make. Maxime Giroux's third feature was winner of the award for Best Canadian Feature Film when it premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014.

The Captive

Atom Egoyan : 2014
Captives

A pick-up truck pulls off the highway at a diner. Confident that his young daughter is safe in the back seat and promising to return with ice cream, the father slips out of his truck and into the diner. When he returns, she is gone. Eight years after the disappearance of Cassandra, some disturbing indications seem to suggest that she is still alive. The police, her parents and Cassandra herself, will try to unravel the mystery of her disappearance. Examining how the kidnapping destroys the relationships among those involved, this psychological drama teases out the complex threads weaving together the victim, her family, the predators and the investigators, revealing the mystery as to what happened to the child during the eight years she was missing. The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2014.

Aloft

Claudia Llosa : 2014
No llores, vuela

A story about responsibility and radical new beginnings and of a struggling mother who encounters the son she abandoned 20 years earlier. Accompanied by a young documentary filmmaker, Ivan penetrates deeper and deeper into an unknown, frozen landscape. A network of flashbacks reveal the reasons behind this journey. When Ivan is a boy his mother Nana works on a farm where she also takes care of Gully, Ivan's younger brother whose mental health is deteriorating as a result of a debilitating illness. Nana tells Ivan to support his brother but he defiantly withdraws into a world of his own instead where he follows his falcon Inti's manoeuvres in the air. One day a healer arrives at the place where they live. Through him, Nana discovers her own healing powers. Together they build fragile tents from twigs where they help heal other people's children. But then a tragic accident occurs which tears Nana's family apart. Years later, Ivan sets off in search of his mother. He is a father himself now and he has heard Nana has set up her tent at the end of a frozen lake. Claudia Llosa's third feature premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2014, and was winner of the Biznaga de Plata for Best Cinematography at Festival de Málaga de Cine Español 2014.

Ressac

Pascale Ferland : 2013
Riptide

After searching in vain for a job in the small seaside town where he was born, Édouard is forced to head off to the big city. He reluctantly leaves behind his mother-in-law Dorine, his wife Gemma and his beloved daughter Chloé. The weight of his absence is felt by all three women. Soon the news arrives of his unexplained death. Beyond the confusion, guilt and anger that accompany such an event, there is the love, hope and idealism of youth, unfulfilled desires and the dreams they share of a better future. When Gemma discovers the unusual legacy left by her late husband, she thinks she's finally found the key to happiness. But what is happiness in the eyes of others? And how do we achieve it? Loosely based on an incident in Québec's recent history, Pascale Ferland's first fiction feature conveys the harsh poetry of daily lives imbued with crushed dreams, regret and the characters' need for ideals and love. Her film premiered at Montréal World Film Festival 2013.

Sarah préfère la course

Chloé Robichaud : 2013
Sarah Prefers to Run

Sarah is a gifted young middle-distance runner. On the running track she is driven and determined, unquestionably sure of who she is and where she is going. Off the track, it's a different story, with her private life demonstrating no such direction. Her life changes when she's offered admission to Québec's best university athletics programme, in Montréal – far from her suburban Québec City home. Sarah doesn't have her mother's financial support for the move, or any support at all: her mother worries that leaving will be bad for Sarah's health and life. But Sarah is stubborn, and moves to Montréal anyway, with her friend, Antoine. Though barely out of their teens, they enter into a marriage of convenience because they want the best scholarships and loans. Marriage turns out to be completely different from what the naïve 20-year-olds expected, and new relationships lead Sarah to start understanding what she truly wants. She doesn't want to hurt anyone with the choices she makes, it's just that she loves running more than anything else. Chloé Robichaud's feature debut is an effortless and honest study of a young woman trying to understand exactly who she is. Her film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Nuit #1

Anne Émond : 2011
Night #1

Clara and Nikolaï meet at a rave. They return to Nikolaï's apartment and frantically make love. Afterwards, instead of parting, the two lovers divulge their deepest secrets to one another, revealing astonishing insights about their lives as they both venture willingly into the darkest parts of themselves. Nicolaï is a beautiful loner, one with great ambition which he's unable to articulate to his peers. At thirty-one years old, he leads a simple and frugal life. He applies himself to reading the great classics of literature but never finishes a book he has begun. Unable to submit to any schedule, he finds himself unfit for work. He envisions big projects and has expansive ideas but, inevitably and despite himself, loses sight of them before they are realised. Clara, like Nikolaï, seems not to be made for this world. She leads a double life. By day, she works as a third grade teacher; by night, she is a compulsive party-girl, exorcising or forgetting her vaunted hopes. She goes out every night, gets drunk and high, invites high-voltage sexual combinations, all the while desperately trying to fill an emotional void yet never succeeding. Though they are tempted to animas by all-too-common and divisive gender politics, politics they simultaneously fear and embrace, the friction between them is trumped by a common determination to bridge the gap that they realise afflicts the women and men of their lost, but far from hopeless, generation. Anne Émond's award-winning directorial debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2011.

Avant que mon coeur bascule

Sébastien Rose : 2012
Before My Heart Falls

Sixteen-year-old Sarah has an unusual life. In a strange, marginal ménage à trois with her contemporary Louis and the older Ji-Guy, she fills her days with petty crime. During the day she hangs around with Louis by motorways, where she deceives and robs innocent people offering a lift. One day things go wrong when a driver dies of a heart attack during a robbery attempt. Sarah can't stop thinking about the dead man and goes looking for the wife he left behind. In her, she finally finds something of the security and friendship she had unconsciously been seeking for so long. But her alternative family doesn't just let her go. Shot in very realistic images, the story of this adolescent girl as she grows up and becomes conscious, is set against the sombre background of grey motorways and decaying industrial sites. A brutal portrait of Québec society, with its almost surreal vision of marginality, the film screened at Québec City Film Festival 2012, and premiered internationally at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Camion

Rafaël Ouellet : 2012

Widower Germain has been a truck driver all his life. After being involved in a road accident that causes the death of a woman, Germain's world collapses. He feels an overwhelming sense of guilt and remorse that keeps him away from the wheel. His state of mind soon starts to worry his younger son Samuel, who puts his own janitor job in Montréal on hold to track down his older brother, drifter Alain, in New Brunswick, hoping to head back together to their hometown to give some support to their father. By turning their family's dynamics upside down, Germain and his sons struggle to retrieve the ties that bound them earlier in their lives and to find hope for the future. With its captivating camerawork and formal and narrative purity, the film addresses, unsentimentally, life's most basic issues. Winner of Best Director and Ecumenical Jury Awards at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

Café de Flore

Jean-Marc Vallée : 2011

Paris in the 1960s and present-day Montréal. A love story following the destinies of Jacqueline, a young Parisian mother of an only child, and Antoine, a Montréal DJ and the women in his life. Jacqueline is an impoverished single mother of little Laurent, born with Down's syndrome. Her life, obsessively devoted to her son, is a routine built around giving him the most love and opportunities she can provide. One day in school Laurent meets Véronique, a girl also with Down's syndrome and soon the two are inseparable, triggering in Jacqueline an unexpected jealousy. Antoine lives a seemingly idyllic life with his girlfriend Rose and two daughters. But behind his glossy, jet-setting exterior he is in deep turmoil, obsessed with the guilt he feels for the breakdown of his previous marriage to Carole, his first love. Weaving between its two parallel stories, in past and present, the film is about love, obsession and betrayal, the constant uncertainty of whether we are doing the right thing for the people we love, and also about knowing when to let go. It's not so much about the destination, as about the journey.

The Red Violin

A film by François Girard

Nicolo Bussotti is a 17th century master craftsman who creates the perfect violin for his unborn child. A tarot reading given for Anna, his pregnant wife, predicts not the future of her own life, as is at first understood, but instead that of the violin in which her spirit resides. When both the child and his mother die during childbirth Bussotti is obsessively compelled to finish making the instrument.

The story begins in present-day Montréal where the violin is to be auctioned. The sale has attracted the attention of musicians and collectors worldwide, and as the bidding commences, the history of this unique instrument is gradually revealed to us. Beginning its life in Cremona, Italy in 1681, the violin travels across continents, cultures and centuries – to Vienna, Oxford, Shanghai and finally to Canada – inspiring love, passion, obsession, betrayal and sacrifice in every life it touches.

Girard's episodic technique of using different periods and cultures does not result in just a chain of separate stories, but allows for a larger frame of reference, making the film's message resonate more widely. What becomes more important is not the differences between the episodes, but the similarities, the recurring motifs and themes which bind the varying strands together. What emerges is a film about survival in adversity; it is a tribute to the universal and enduring pleasure that music provides when all around is destruction and pain. A beautifully told tale of romance, adventure and intrigue.