Who by Fire

Three teenagers are shaken up by their first loves in the turmoil of their youth. At a time when others are conforming, they stand their ground and assert their right to love and be free.

While Montreal is in the throes of a string of kidnappings targeting young boys, ten-year-old Felix is finishing his school year in the seemingly quiet suburb where he lives. A sensitive boy with a vivid imagination, Felix is afraid of everything. Little by little, his imaginary demons begin to mirror those of the truly disturbing world around him.

Autumn, somewhere in Copenhagen: a pair of students, Emil and Victoria, can’t make their relationship work but can’t quite break up either. Philippe, who has just lost his job as a professor in a film school, followed by his apartment, can’t cope with the way his affair with a young literature student ended and now he’s crashing with some of his old students, including Emil. Naturally, he soon meets Victoria.

Between the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood, Lou and Laylou go through the summer of their 17th birthday. A poetic, singular and strong look at a pivotal moment in adolescence.

Hotel-Dieu Hospital in Montreal, one of the oldest in North America. In the emergency ward, patients await their diagnosis, foreshadowed by the most personal questions from doctors. Others don't have the luxury of worrying about such things. They suffer in pain, fight to live or simply want it all to end, despairing at the body's inability to do what it's supposed to. We cannot face disease, much less face those who suffer from it. But what's left of the human once laid out on the operating table, dreading bad news or anticipating the end? Something moving, feeling, loving. The heart that beats.

In the Paris suburbs, the ashes of the night's riots fall on the lives of young people. Games, rap, intimacy, boredom and tension resonate in the concrete. In the streets, demonstrations see groups clashing and dividing. Meanwhile, in the 6th arrondissement, the students of Fenelon high school meet between classes, kiss each other, share their fears and imagine their future. Sociologist Alain Touraine, who is old enough to be their grandfather, tries to make sense of a fractured society. He was welcomed with open arms in Latin America where his ideas still found an audience. Chronicle of a year in Paris.