That Kind of Summer

Behind the wheel of her little car, Nicky seems to be on a mission. Roads pass by but the ideas in her head remain unfathomable. A meal, the discovery of a rifle, chance encounters: the mystery remains unsolved.

A popular sensation in medieval Europe, bestiaries were catalogs of beasts featuring exotic animal illustrations, zoological wisdom, and ancient legends. The documentary unfolds like a filmic picture book where both humans and animals are on display. As we observe them, they also observe us and one another, invoking the Hindu idea of “darshan”: a mutual beholding that initiates a shift in consciousness.

An introverted man runs a "car cemetery" where people come to find parts for old vehicles.

Living somewhere in present-day Quebec, Boris Malinowski has achieved all his goals. A freethinker, open-minded and proud, he also displays a certain arrogance when it comes to his successes. For some time now, his wife Béatrice, a Canadian government minister, has been bedridden, suffering from a mysterious depression. To escape from his wife’s agony, Boris begins a relationship with a colleague, Helga, and gets close to Klara, a young woman who works as a maid in Boris’s home. The sudden appearance of a stranger in his life forces Boris to come face-to-face with the world, with everything he takes for granted, with all his certainties.

It is a small village somewhere in Quebec with only 215 inhabitants. When young Simon Dubé dies in a car accident, the villagers’ tranquil and regulated existence is thrown out of step. People are decidedly reluctant to talk about the accident. Time seems to lose all meaning. Snowy, frosty winter days stretch out into infinity. Mysterious figures emerge from the fog and commit strange acts. But what seems strange is sometimes more familiar than one might suspect.

Caught in the tensions of the returning Pierrot, an ex-con, and the neighboring outlaws, Coralie attempts to distance herself from an ambiguous if not tormented past. Set against a busy highway, the butting houses dominated by a boss loosing sight of his operation are suspended as an anarchic surge approaches.

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.

Set in a rural Québec village in the dead of winter, Jean-François, a single father, works at a deserted bowling alley at night and in a rundown motel during the day. His daughter, Julyvonne, never leaves their home. Jean-François isolates her in fear that contact with the outside world will scar her the way it has him.

Jean-François, Ronald, Alexis, Cédric, Benoit and Maxim are gladiators of modern times. From the strongman to the top-class bodybuilder, to the veteran who has become a trainer, they all share the same definition and obsession with overcoming their limitations. They are waiting for the next competition, working hard in the gym and following extreme diets.

Two recently released prisoners learn to live in a sugar shack deep in the forest.

Struggling with depression and social anxiety, Paul has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes it one day at a time.

Set on carrying out her task with dedication, a woman is obsessed with watching over anonymous interiors and occupying them. Both a custodian of the premises and a ghostly presence, she becomes an echo of how we relate to time, solitude and the melancholy of forsaken spaces.

Welcome to Lisbon: there are mermaids by the Tagus and birds flying over the old city; there are mad scientists and singing fish; lost tourist guides and lost tourists; fado and sad guitars. What a weird city you may think - but no. Lisbon is about being different, sarcastic, welcoming to foreigners even in an economic crisis. Different directors became fascinated by our strangeness. We became fascinated by these directors. The city is never the same in these four episodes, here in Lisbon.

Mira is a solitary woman of few words. She travels the roads meeting desperate people with whom she seems to have forged strange death pacts. With no apparent destination, she meets Madeleine and Ludo, two free-spirited hedonists living deep in the forest. Taking a break from her missions and unsettled by a sudden encounter with an excessive and intriguing young man, she uses this stopover to question her wandering life and reassess her dark agreements.

On a film set, director Denis Côté and his crew are shooting his latest feature; Vic+Flo saw a bear, starring Romane Bohringer, Pierrette Robitaille and Marc-André Grondin. A contemplative film where we can observe and listen in on what actually went on, where technicians make the final adjustments, actors giving their best performances and a calm and collected director orchestrating it all. To sum it up, it's cinema at work.

Éric St-Amand and Mika Dionne are 9 and 10 years old, going nowhere fast in the heat of a New Brunswick summer. The luminous, idyllic flipside to the Old Fashion Waltz.