Guy Fournier

A young woman, living with her parents and siblings on a remote farm in harsh, picturesque northern Québec, has three suitors: a steady and unimaginative farmer, Eutrope, the Americanized and wealthy Lorenzo, who has sought his fortune in Boston, and François Paradis, a rough and virile logger who captures her heart despite the warnings of her parents and the village priest. For a year, marked by seasonal change in an atmosphere charged with the strangeness of Indians and the demons of the woods, we see Maria at work and prayer, struggling with decisions, choosing to stay in Canada, in love with François, seeking to change his rough behaviors, and dealing with extraordinary loss.

Catherine, a concert pianist, is surprised one night by the arrival of her best friend from childhood, Marie-Alexandrine (Max), whom she hasn't seen for 25 years. Catherine and Max were Québec's most promising young pianists in the mid-1960's when the adventurous Max gets pregnant. She wants to keep the child, but her mother forces her to give him up for adoption; afterwards, Max leaves Québec and music. Now, years later, she returns, obsessed with finding her son. She locates the adoption records, and social services contacts her son to ask if he wants to see her. He refuses, but she keeps trying. Is a relationship with him possible? And what about her musical talent?

This three-hour prequel to the 2002 miniseries, "Trudeau", chronicles the coming of age of Canada's 15th Prime Minister and the forces that shaped his brilliant mind and fierce political will. Fatherless at 14, a thorn in the side of his Jesuit professors, the young Pierre Elliott Trudeau chafed under the suffocating pressures of the very conservative Quebec of the '30s and '40s. Iconoclast, gadfly, a restless traveler and ladies' man, he helped plant the seeds for Quebec's Quiet Revolution by challenging all of its sacred cows—including the Catholic Church and the autocratic premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis.