Jean-Marc Vallée

Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

Sophia is a philosophy professor in Montreal and has lived as a couple with Xavier for 10 years. Sylvain is a carpenter in the Laurentians and must renovate their country house. When Sophia meets Sylvain for the first time, it’s love at first sight. Opposites attract, but can it last?

1978. In a small village in Bas-St-Laurent, Guy’s tragic death is a shock for the Leblanc family. For many years, the real cause of his death is kept hidden from some members of the family, including his son David. The latter in turn starts his own family with his wife Marie. He lovingly raises his children Laurence and Frédéric, but deep within him harbours a persistent melancholy.

December 24, 1983, 10:50 p.m.; Julie and her cousins ate too much sugar, and Santa Claus is late. Denis, alone in his car, is anxious about setting foot in his former in-laws’ house to pick up his children.

Toronto, Canada, 1899. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) fervently believes that he is destined to become Prime Minister, but to do so he will first have to fight his personal obsessions and overcome the many obstacles he will encounter on his tortuous path to power.

A completely hand-made historical micro-epic about the final minutes in the life of Winnipeg's doomed Second World War hero, Andrew Mynarski (1916-1944). Combining wartime aviation melodrama with classical and avant-garde animation techniques (including stop-motion, silhouettes, bleaching, scratching, hand-painting and rubbing letratone patterns directly on the celluloid) Mynarski Death Plummet is a psychedelic photo-chemical war picture on the theme of self-sacrifice, immortality and jellyfish.

Hedonistic philosopher-cum-delinquent, Antonin always finds the right word to win himself both the compliments and the rebukes of his fellows. Antonin never misses a chance to exploit both the goodness and the patience of his wife, Églantine. He is also a constant source of disappointment to his sister, Solveig. Busy trying to avoid Rose the tax collector who is after his neck, Antonin cannot get his attraction and desire for the beautiful Cassiopée out of his skull. Tormented, Antonin must now devise the right scheme and the right words to apologize to Aurore, one of his victims. Between these five women, Antonin gets stuck.

A high-class prostitute by choice, Nelly Arcan’s colorful life is recreated in a multi-layered and stylish mix of make-believe and memoir, revealing Nelly’s alter egos: the neurotic writer, the vulnerable lover, the call girl and the star. Nelly shocked the literary world with her elegant writing and the lurid details of sex work in her autobiographical first novel, Whore, which became a critically acclaimed bestseller. Despite unprecedented success, Nelly’s remarkable life ended in tragedy.

Wilcox exists outside the norm. Deserter, delinquent, or survivalist, he quietly roams, looking to put down roots or for what could simply be called freedom.

Benjamin tells his ex-girlfriend, Angie, that he joined a cell of left-wing terrorists to get revenge on her former boss, who owns a right-wing radio station. His story blends conceptual artists, amateur theatre troupes, hallucinogenic vinyl record and other magical powers. All that nonsense leave Angie wondering if he made that up only to win her back.

In the idealism and mutation of his home town of Winnipeg, the filmmaker Matthew Rankin launches a failed campaign of absolute inter-human solidarity entirely in Esperanto, the artificial language of world peace.

Part sympathetic portrait and part exposé of the absurd, Your Higher Self dives into the world of life coaching – a modern phenomenon in full swing – embodying the quest of our individualistic society: to be oneself, only better.

Aurore Cormier was a settler child who died from smallpox at the turn of the 20th century, near what is now known as Thunder Bay. 100 years later, her relatives search for her grave.

Through the stories of four women that embody the themes of transmission and social commitment, Fermieres takes a sensitive look at the Country Women's Circles, Quebec's oldest women's association.