Of Birds and Roofs

Back in the family home a year after her mother's death, a daughter begins a painful sorting process with her father, navigating between silence and memories, in an attempt to rebuild a fragile bond marked by absence and grief.

A tale where appearances deceive paints the portrait of a neighborhood filled with secrets.

Silence settles over Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré’s frozen landscape, where echoes of a once-thriving religious tourism linger. At the heart of a place in transition, this film takes viewers on a timeless journey through memory and disappearance, weaving together presence and absence.

Kai does not identify merely as someone experiencing homelessness. He defines himself as a pigeon tamer, a fire-breather, and a modern-day traveler. The day he dons an augmented reality headset, he uses his eyes and Facebook livestreams to paint a portrait of a city in the throes of emotion, a city struck by a homelessness crisis of its own making.

This experimental documentary explores Montreal’s urbanity through a montage-collage of its architecture. Balancing heritage and modernity, it questions gentrification dynamics, inequalities, and the evolution of the urban landscape.