Denis Côté

Excursions

In Lisbon, Claudia offers guided tours in and out of the city. At night, she kills time with her sister in a modest apartment. In Lisbon, lonesome Martinho is fluent in Italian and guide tourists all around town. In Lisbon, a band is jamming. They perform improvisational noise jazz. In Lisbon, a mysterious phenomenon fills the air. Claudia and Martinho’s lonely hearts will discreetly meet to the sound of music.

Drifting States

Christian has commited a crime, a crime of compassion. A troubled soul, he must now flee not only the law, but the deep ethical consequences of his act. The path he sets upon leads him to where all roads end : a small community by the name of Radisson, 1500km north of Montreal. Slowly, he starts his life anew among his new neighbours, a new job, a new interest in life. His story drifts along, somewhere between fiction and reality…

Our Private Lives

After a lengthy virtual relationship over the Internet, Milena and Philip take the plunge and agree to finally meet. Having lived in Montreal for over a decade, Milena, an immigrant of Bulgarian descent, accepts to greet her correspondent Philip, a flirtatious photographer from Sofia. Out in an isolated cottage in Quebec's countryside, the couple abandon themselves to one another. Between periods of cultural clashes and fleshly pleasures, the two assess each other and the possibilities for true love. But strange, uncanny events soon disrupt Milena and Philip's quiet intimacy as secrecy and silence slowly set in -nihilproductions

Nobody's Violence

Ghost Town Anthology

It is a small village somewhere in Quebec with only 215 inhabitants. When young Simon Dubé dies in a car accident, the villagers’ tranquil and regulated existence is thrown out of step. People are decidedly reluctant to talk about the accident. Time seems to lose all meaning. Snowy, frosty winter days stretch out into infinity. Mysterious figures emerge from the fog and commit strange acts. But what seems strange is sometimes more familiar than one might suspect.

Boris Without Beatrice

Living somewhere in present-day Quebec, Boris Malinowski has achieved all his goals. A freethinker, open-minded and proud, he also displays a certain arrogance when it comes to his successes. For some time now, his wife Béatrice, a Canadian government minister, has been bedridden, suffering from a mysterious depression. To escape from his wife’s agony, Boris begins a relationship with a colleague, Helga, and gets close to Klara, a young woman who works as a maid in Boris’s home. The sudden appearance of a stranger in his life forces Boris to come face-to-face with the world, with everything he takes for granted, with all his certainties.

Social Hygiene

Hedonistic philosopher-cum-delinquent, Antonin always finds the right word to win himself both the compliments and the rebukes of his fellows. Antonin never misses a chance to exploit both the goodness and the patience of his wife, Églantine. He is also a constant source of disappointment to his sister, Solveig. Busy trying to avoid Rose the tax collector who is after his neck, Antonin cannot get his attraction and desire for the beautiful Cassiopée out of his skull. Tormented, Antonin must now devise the right scheme and the right words to apologize to Aurore, one of his victims. Between these five women, Antonin gets stuck.

Paul

Struggling with depression and social anxiety, Paul has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes it one day at a time.

Days Before the Death of Nicky

Behind the wheel of her little car, Nicky seems to be on a mission. Roads pass by but the ideas in her head remain unfathomable. A meal, the discovery of a rifle, chance encounters: the mystery remains unsolved.

Seconde valse

Éric St-Amand and Mika Dionne are 9 and 10 years old, going nowhere fast in the heat of a New Brunswick summer. The luminous, idyllic flipside to the Old Fashion Waltz.

That Kind of Summer

In a countryside house where they are meant to explore the troubles in their sexuality, three women spend days and nights apprehending their inner demons. A serene German therapist and a kind-hearted social worker supervise them, help them and try to maintain the fragile balance of the group. During 26 days, in the midst of summer, Geisha, Léonie and Eugénie will have to refrain from breaking down, tame the whispers from present times and consider the future.

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear

Two recently released prisoners learn to live in a sugar shack deep in the forest.

Bestiary

A popular sensation in medieval Europe, bestiaries were catalogs of beasts featuring exotic animal illustrations, zoological wisdom, and ancient legends. The documentary unfolds like a filmic picture book where both humans and animals are on display. As we observe them, they also observe us and one another, invoking the Hindu idea of “darshan”: a mutual beholding that initiates a shift in consciousness.

Mademoiselle Kenopsia

Set on carrying out her task with dedication, a woman is obsessed with watching over anonymous interiors and occupying them. Both a custodian of the premises and a ghostly presence, she becomes an echo of how we relate to time, solitude and the melancholy of forsaken spaces.

Here in Lisbon

Welcome to Lisbon: there are mermaids by the Tagus and birds flying over the old city; there are mad scientists and singing fish; lost tourist guides and lost tourists; fado and sad guitars. What a weird city you may think - but no. Lisbon is about being different, sarcastic, welcoming to foreigners even in an economic crisis. Different directors became fascinated by our strangeness. We became fascinated by these directors. The city is never the same in these four episodes, here in Lisbon.

May We Sleep Soundly

An unseen presence traverses a snowy landscape and enters a series of winter homes, in which slumbering occupants go eerily undisturbed.

L'ours

On a film set, director Denis Côté and his crew are shooting his latest feature; Vic+Flo saw a bear, starring Romane Bohringer, Pierrette Robitaille and Marc-André Grondin. A contemplative film where we can observe and listen in on what actually went on, where technicians make the final adjustments, actors giving their best performances and a calm and collected director orchestrating it all. To sum it up, it's cinema at work.

Tennessee

In a hotel meant for sex meetings, a woman cleans the rooms, making them ready for the new clients, as we hear her voice in the sound track, in a marked contrast between the imagined and the real sexuality.

La sphatte

Two red-clad women are pursued by an insistent, yet weary stranger. An existential stroll on the nocturnal pavement of a gloomy Montreal, carried by the sounds of punk rock music.

Curling

Set in a rural Québec village in the dead of winter, Jean-François, a single father, works at a deserted bowling alley at night and in a rundown motel during the day. His daughter, Julyvonne, never leaves their home. Jean-François isolates her in fear that contact with the outside world will scar her the way it has him.

All That She Wants

Caught in the tensions of the returning Pierrot, an ex-con, and the neighboring outlaws, Coralie attempts to distance herself from an ambiguous if not tormented past. Set against a busy highway, the butting houses dominated by a boss loosing sight of his operation are suspended as an anarchic surge approaches.

Old Fashion Waltz

An old fashioned waltz. Flirting with horror cinema, here is the portrait of an aging New Brunswick population, unfolding like a found footage object equally elegiac as it is nightmarish.

Renegade Breakdown Live

A musical and visual journey of Renegade Breakdown, Marie Davidson & L’Œil Nu's 2020 album.

cnfnmnt e/scp(i)sm

In "Spaces #2", 7 internationally acclaimed directors shot, after commissioning by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, a short film at home, making their own timely comment on the new reality that we live in. The project is inspired by the book "Species of Spaces" by the French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist, Georges Perec and the days of quarantine. The idea is to create a film at home, using the environment, the people or the animals in that space. The only outdoor areas that may be used are outdoor living spaces, such as the terrace, the garden, the balcony and the stairwell. "cnfnmnt e/scp(i)sm" is Denis Côté's submission.