Break Free

A girl working in a crisis center has a curious experience after receiving a call for help. Belgian actress and director Yolande Moreau has an unforgettable role here, one of her first films. A fauna of truculent characters lives this short film at once tender and joyful realized by the Quebecoise Carole Laganière during her studies in cinema in Belgium.

Documentary that chronicles daily life at Maison Michel Sarrazin, a palliative care home in Quebec where different patients spend their final days. Men and women facing death try to reclaim the dignity that illness has taken from them. The camera accompanies those intimate, everyday moments where life and death brush against each other: a caress, a conversation, a shared silence between those who care and those who say goodbye.

Sylvie Giroux doesn’t have kids, but every year, from September to June, about 10 teenagers aged 16 to 21 add a bit of magic to her life. These youngsters suffer from autism, Down syndrome, dyspraxia, severe anxiety and intellectual handicaps.

Absence means heartbreak and lack. A kind of inner turmoil then sets in, which often leads to a personal quest. At the origin of the film is the director's intimate drama of seeing her mother, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, drift away from her as her memory fades. This apprehension of a coming separation serves as a link to other beings struggling with a form of absence.

Carole Laganière dives deeply into personal territory in this beautifully crafted exploration of absence and loss and its painful effect on daily lives. Inspired by her mother’s steadily advancing Alzheimer’s and the inevitability of her estrangement, Laganière weaves their story with the stories of others wrestling with loss: Ines, an immigrant who returns to her birth country of Croatia to find the mother who abandoned her during the war; Deni, an American author who’s finally able to search for his Quebec roots; and Nathalie, who’s desperately looking for her missing sister. Through their experiences the film ponders how absence is often the catalyst for a quest—a quest for information, understanding and often acceptance. Through its many voices, Absences speaks to us of the immense fragility and resiliency of human emotions.

They are cowboys, musicians, singers, or simply fervent fans. For half the year, this colorful crowd evolves in a world apart where everything is lived under the reign of country music. Traveling with them to Quebec country festivals, Carole Laganière discovered a culture imbued with human warmth. Her documentary allows us to share, and ultimately understand, the passion of these enthusiasts who travel from city to village to live to the rhythm of country music.