Les blues du bleuet

Summer unveils a new blueberry season in northern Canada. The fields are covered in blue and workers from all over scramble before the frost puts an end to the harvest. And yet this time of year is much more than just picking: it's a time of music and connection.

Liberation Day

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

Harmonium en Californie

Through concerts and interviews, folk-progressive group Harmonium takes Quebec culture to California. This documentary full of colour and sound, filmed in California in 1978, recounts the ups and downs of the journey of the Quebec musical group Harmonium, who came to feel the pulse of Americans and see if culture, their culture, can succeed in crossing borders.

Danse avec Le Pen

In France’s last presidential election, Marine Le Pen, a right-wing candidate, won over 30 per cent of the vote after an attempt to rebrand a party long associated with her controversial father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. See how three of her supporters faced similar obstacles in changing the narrative.

I speak français

VOÏVOD: We Are Connected

From unlikely origins in northern Québec at the height of the Cold War, Voïvod’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi aesthetic, fuelled by a youthful obsession with their instruments, took them from underground success to sharing dates and tours with Iron Maiden, Rush, and Metallica. Despite adversity, and perhaps by cosmic intervention or just serendipity, Voïvod found guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain; subsequently, the band re-ignited their engines and laid a course back to Morgöth via numerous live shows around the world, a comeback album in Target Earth, singles, EPs, and finally, the late-career triumph, The Wake. In 2019, Voïvod were recognized by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Juno Award for best hard rock/metal album of the year for The Wake.

Onze jours en février

On the eve of the publication of a biography of Claude Jutra, one of the most famous and celebrated filmmakers in Quebec and Canada, a leak leaked to the press reveals that the book contains anonymous allegations of pedophile acts committed by the filmmaker. The rumor spread like lightning, suddenly igniting the entirety of Quebec society. By finding today some of the main witnesses propelled overnight into the heart of an unparalleled media tornado, the documentary reconstructs with archive images and other previously unpublished images, the sequence of events which led to a rewriting of the story.

Atik, gardien du territoire

Malartic

Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

No Address

This feature-length documentary by Alanis Obomsawin examines the plight of Native people who come to Montreal searching for jobs and a better life. Often arriving without money, friends or jobs, a number of them quickly become part of the homeless population. Both dislocated from their traditional values and alienated from the rest of the population, they are torn between staying and returning home.

Quais-Blues

Asbestos

A cinematic and introspective look at the residents of a Quebec town—once the site of the world's largest asbestos mine—as they grapple with their community's industrial past. Striving to honour their heritage while reconciling with their history and forging a new path forward, the miners delve into the intricacies of progress and healing.

Bajo el silencio

Doués et oubliés : maman, quand est-ce que j'apprends?

Le beau plaisir

From the lower St. Lawrence, a picture of whale hunting that looks more like a round-up, with a corral, whale-boys and all. In 1534, when he stopped at the island he named l'Île-aux-Coudres, Jacques Cartier saw how the Indians captured the little white beluga whales by setting a fence of saplings into off-shore mud. In the film, the islanders show that the old method still works, thanks to the trusting 'sea-pigs,' the same old tide, and a little magic.

Orbainak

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Lorraine Pintal - Pour que la lumière ne meure jamais

Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize, this tribute film was created as a gift for Lorraine Pintal, director of Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Featuring some of the most memorable characters and performers of Pintal’s career, the film’s succession of surreal scenes from different dramatic worlds introduces viewers to the exceptional woman of theatre, stage director, and friend whom they consider to be the “ghost light” of Quebec theatre.

Les États-Désunis du Canada

Secessionnist movements in Canada outside Quebec.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Olympia - Fest der Schönheit

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.