Upstairs

Like thousands of student from everywhere in America, six young Quebecers will spend a week during Spring Break in Daytona hoping to find the opportunity to party. But their trip will not be as exciting as they hoped.

Since the 1990s, the old Gaulin Manor has housed erstwhile residents of Saint-Hyacinthe psychiatric hospital. Some thirty inhabitants occupy this alternative lodging space, their salvation after the wave of deinstitutionalization that one day threw them into the streets with no resources. Profit rules, and so this motel at the world's end will be destroyed to fill the pockets of promoters. The film captures this turning of the page, where each lost character reshuffles their daily life in moving on to the next chapter. Lending an ear to these forgotten outcasts, Manor is careful in framing these shadowy figures, bringing them to life in the light of our attention.

A heartrending portrait of a couple who face the ultimate test: the consequences they face when Simon, a writer, discovers he has an incurable form of cancer. Lucidly approaching the processes in place to deal with the end of a life – what it means for those faced with their own mortality and for those left behind.