André Duchesne

This documentary short is a portrait of Miyuki Tanobe, a Japanese painter who has chosen to make Québec her home. She works in the Nihonga style, applying centuries-old techniques to scenes drawn directly from the working-class neighborhoods of Montréal. The film records the progression of one of her paintings from preliminary sketch to completion.

The painter María Luisa Señoret paints a portrait of her filmmaker daughter, while the latter films the process and walks among the canvases hanging on the walls of her mother’s studio. These movements become a pretext for a journey back in time that unveils the many twists and turns of Señoret’s eventful life.

In a poor neighborhood, teenagers plot an assassination while a party is being organized for the local usurer.