Montreal Stories

Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss their differing attitudes and desires but come to no resolution.

An experimental short film shot in slow motion and set to Ottokar Nováček's violin composition Perpetuum mobile, the film depicts a love triangle between two men and a woman.

In 1838, François-Xavier Bouchard fights beside his Québec countrymen and the English minority.

A fact-based account of ordinary citizens who found themselves arrested and imprisoned without charge for weeks during the October Crisis in 1970 Quebec.

Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes.

Les inconnus de la terre starts like a traditional feature film: in the beginning of the film all the leading roles are given a short introduction. This is followed by a number of interviews, in which the makers unashamedly appear themselves. They include an interview with a lonely shepherd and one with three unmarried brothers who try to run the parental farm for better or worse. Notwithstanding the fact that this mode of interviewing has now become classical, les inconnus de la terre works rather refreshingly. The film is more than just an enumeration of problems. In an honest way it shows the ties of those involved to the land and to nature, in addition to being a plea for the modernization of French agriculture.

In the late 1960s, with the triumph of bilingualism and biculturalism, New Brunswick's Université de Moncton became the setting for the awakening of Acadian nationalism after centuries of defeatism and resignation. Although 40% of the province's population spoke French, they had been unable to make their voices heard. The movement started with students-sit-ins, demonstrations against Parliament, run-ins with the police - and soon spread to a majority of Acadians. The film captures the behind-the-scenes action and the students' determination to bring about change. An invaluable document of the rebirth of a people.

This film looks at the world of children with hearing loss and the importance of early diagnosis. With its straightforward, rigorous cinematic style and intimate approach to the subject, the film focuses on the human rather than the technical side of the problem of hearing impairment.

Set in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, we follow the coming of age of a young boy and the life of his family which owns the town's general store and undertaking business.

While visiting their grandparents in the Québec countryside, two children enter a fantasy kingdom and are confronted by evil forces.

A candid-camera view of professional wrestling as seen in the Montréal Forum, where some of the biggest bouts are staged, and in back-street wrestling parlours where the warriors practice their art.

Two teenage girls go to winter carnival in Quebec City for the first time. Their ambiguous, tentative relation with a young boy brings both of them the sweet intensity and disillusionment of first love. One of four film sketches on the problems of adolescents facing the adult world in the 1960s included in the anthology film That Tender Age (La fleur de l'âge, ou Les adolescentes). The three other sketches were directed by Jean Rouch, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Gian Vittorio Baldi.

Dedicated “to all victims of intolerance,” "The Devil’s Toy" is a faux–public service documentary that chronicles the early days of skateboarding in Montreal. Framed as mock anti-skateboarding propaganda, Claude Jutra contrasts official hostility with the exhilaration and freedom experienced by youths racing downhill through city streets, shortly before the activity was banned.

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

An unconventional undercover Chicago cop and his partner are recruited to commit the murder of a New Orleans criminal kingpin.

A man struggles with his identity, his life choices, his interracial relationship, and his latent homosexuality. A portrait of some young intellectuals in early sixties Montreal.