Olivier Godin

In today's Montreal, the devil, through discreet manners of seduction, takes liberty upon death. A brave trumpet player in love with a damned soul must fight him.

Jazz. Haiti. Plantains.

The Barbarian believes he has only a few erections left before death. Cursed to a life in a thrift shop and haunted by family tragedy, he sets his sights on Marie, an alcoholic special-ed teacher. If he must go, he figures, he might as well go out in good company.

Much of Godin’s purple, declarative dialogue is delivered at a breakneck pace, as though these verbally nimble actors are running lines at auctioneer-speed while simultaneously playing their intentions to the hilt. The film is an exercise in radical compression, its velocity integral to its comic effects, though all the rapid-fire yakking and spastically edited reverse-shot sequences lead to a wordless denouement in which Mésuline searches her pockets for a cigarette in a shot that’s hardly protracted yet still takes up about one-fifth of this taut little film’s runtime. Her pleasure in finally lighting up is fairly adorable.

The blacksmith returns to Montreal with fire and sword. He finds his old shop, now abandoned, and all the memories it holds.

Francis is a taciturn teenager unhappy with his life. Not wanting to stay with is mother, he lives in a foster home in the Laurentian countryside with is guardian, Brian. They spend their days building a bed for Camille, a young orphan soon to be joining them. But Francis wants more: he wants out. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with Bruno, a young gardener who decides to pass the night in the forest.

Koroviev, a police officer who teaches poetry in a brigade of police poets, is in search of a precious Bible annotated by Pierre Maheu, the captain of the St. Elias, a legendary ship. His quest leads him to befriend a young thief who introduces him to a mysterious woman named Coriandre.

That winter in Montréal, there is a girl. Three captains are wooing her. Cinema killed Jean-Baptiste Lamirande, the disastrous Liberator, who comes back to life just before Christmas. Héloïse, an amnesiac actress who lost her watch, has been reported missing.

Antilles, 1994 On the eve of the arrival of foreign military forces on the island where they grew up, members of a peaceful group kidnap a soldier in order to find information that could forever alter the political destiny of their country.

Waiting for April is a romantic, epic cop comedy freely inspired by songs and medieval fables collected by storyteller Michel Faubert. Detective Haffigan investigates a mysterious singing bone, a talisman endowed with dangerous powers, and chased after by a coterie of second-rate outlaws. The bone turns out to be in possession of Mithridate, a seductive actor with a gorilla’s right arm. Haffigan expresses romantic interest in the charming comedian, but he rebuffs her, instead setting his sights on Eleonore, a cashier at the Bank of Permanent Fog, who promises to liberate him from the bone’s curse.

Fiction bleeds into reality. Women declare themselves pregnant with the letter E! Denzel Washington plays himself in a popular sitcom. Chaos reigns and cops crave poetry. Mélusine Catafor abandons her identity in the city of Three-Rivers to seek a new one in Montreal where she hopes to learn English and where her best friend, Marie-Cobra Tremblay strives to birth an Odyssey. Rosaire, a melancholic pastor, organizes a major conference on Impossible Loves. Also, you'll meet La Renarde who hides a hole-punch in her coat. You'll learn the hole-punch is a formidable weapon used to pierce the ears of alley cats. As you can imagine, it's a comedy.

An anachronistic firefighter, a quotidian poet, and an expert soup-maker, Ducarmel also plays in a competitive basketball league. There’s only one problem with his hobbies: finding a babysitter to look after his daughter. Moreover, when he dozes off in the evening, he dreams… a little too forcefully. In his bizarre dream world, a beguiling blue book reigns, love looms, and he is the best basketball player of all time.

Suite canadienne by Ludmilla Chiriaeff, broadcast in 1958 during l’heure du concert on Radio-Canada, shows ballet dancers disguised as peasants, traversing a fantasized colonial rurality. The discovery of this archival document represents the starting point of Adam Kinner's project.

Lost in Montreal, an American is looking for a missing trumpet player. He begins his search in the apartment of the musician, where he'll meet Melissa, the young woman who lived with the missing man.