‘It's the dream': Cannes showcases Canadian filmmakers outside the old guard
On the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, the red-and-white Canada Pavilion, located on the calm and pristine shores of the French Riviera, is a quiet oasis of laptop typing and polite networking. Especially contrasted with the boom-boom-boom thud of the American Pavilion a few tents down, where the atmosphere was thick with a smiley but nervy 'Do I know you?' attitude.
The parallel moods on the Croisette underlined Canada's here-but-not-in-your-face presence at the 78th edition of the world's most prestigious film festival. After several recent editions of Cannes in which Canadian cinema's more name-brand auteurs stood tall – think of last year's festival featuring legacy-defining work from David Cronenberg (The Shrouds) and Guy Maddin (Rumours) – this year's Canadian contingent offers a quieter, more sneak-up-on-you energy from artists either emerging or long on the cusp.
Of the three Canadian filmmakers whose work is competing in the festival's sidebar program Directors' Fortnight – Anne Émond's doom-tinged romcom Amour Apocalypse (Peak Everything), Felix Dufour-Laperrière's intense feature-length cartoon Le Mort n'existe pas (Death Does Not Exist), and Alex Boya's darkly whimsical animated short titled Bread Will Walk – each director is a Cannes newbie.
'I think it's a good sign for Canadian cinema if filmmakers are being invited to Cannes for the first or second time fairly early in their careers,' says Toronto International Film Festival chief executive Cameron Bailey, who is in town this week not only scoping out films for this fall's 50th edition of TIFF, but laying the groundwork for the launch of Toronto's official content market in 2026. 'It's always great when there's a Cronenberg or an Egoyan, but if there's only that, then that's a bad sign for Canadian filmmakers.'
Quebecois animator Dufour-Laperrière knows well that he's not carrying the imprimatur of a Denis Villeneuve or Denys Arcand – and he wouldn't expect to, working in the field of adult-skewing animation. Which makes the invitation to debut his work at Cannes all the more important to him, and those of his fellow Canadian artists.
'It's breaking the boundaries. There's no public audience for adult animation, it doesn't exist. So it's a real pleasure to screen an adult animated feature in a general cinema context,' says the filmmaker, who began working on Death Does Not Exist, which follows the shattered life of a political activist, more than a decade ago. 'I'm joyful about having the opportunity to share this kind of work with moviegoers in a festival that permits it to stand out.'
Canadian filmmaker Dominic Desjardins, who is also in Cannes for the first time with his impressively soul-crushing virtual-reality project The Dollhouse (a co-production with Luxembourg), possesses a more uniquely un-Canadian sense of unbridled enthusiasm.
'Being in Cannes is huge! It's the dream, you know?' says the filmmaker, who spent years working on the VR project out of his small Toronto office with his wife, producer Rayne Zukerman. 'This is a festival for creators who are not working for commercial purposes, but who just feel a powerful drive to bring a story into the world. Having a venue like Cannes, and being invited there, is saying that there's not just a market for this, but a need in the cultural landscape.'
Although Canadian filmmakers have a wealth of opportunities to showcase their work at home, the international connections that a Cannes premiere can deliver are unparalleled.
'The mission is to reach out to Canadians, but also the world. And on that level, you can make so many connections once the same content is seen from the angle of an international audience,' says Bread Will Walk director Boya, whose short neatly subverts the zombie genre and features the voice of Jay Baruchel. 'You get to develop a relationship to your work in a more cubistic way – you can look at it from different angles and learn from how it's been viewed by audiences from one culture to the next.'
Naturally, all of the Canadian titles at Cannes are premiering under the shadow of tariffs and other cultural politics seeping out of the United States – still the dominant force both in the global entertainment industry and this year's festival (up to and including the American Pavilion's soundtrack). But for the Canadian talent on hand, the tension might in fact be healthy.
'As an artist, we create environments of exchange in new terms,' says Boya. 'I think there are two options that you can take: be responsive to the backdrop of those dynamics, or nurture the things that you're fostering, the forums that you're trying to build as an artist, and it will just naturally co-exist with the overarching zeitgeist.
'These tectonic plates, they'll always be clashing – but you're building something that floats on its own gravitational pull. That's the value of creators connecting with audiences and other creators. Focus on the storytelling.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Grab your popcorn! A microcinema just opened in Cambridge
The Little Prince Micro-Cinema seats 12 people per screening They call it the big screen, but this movie theatre experience is pretty small. The Little Prince Micro-Cinema – a movie theatre with just 12 seats – is opening Friday in the Gaslight District in Galt. "We're kind of tongue in cheek having fun with the idea of calling it the world's second smallest movie theatre," Leigh Cooney, the owner and operator, told CBC News. In 2020, Cooney opened his first microcinema location in Stratford, Ont. In 2021, the Stratford location earned the Guinness World Record for the world's smallest movie theatre with just 12 seats. Like the Stratford location, the new Galt location will also have 12 seats, and will be open to both public and private screenings. 'A passion project' On their website, it says that The Little Prince Micro-Cinema "operate[s] on a community-before-profits model." "We strive to leave the community a better place than we found it," the website said. "It's very much a passion project," said Cooney. He said the business does make money, but that it's mostly from private bookings, and it's not a lot. "Eighty per cent of our time is spent on private bookings," he said. "Every week we do anywhere from two to say eight ticketed movies, like a regular movie theatre," he added, explaining how his small cinema would not survive if he mainly did ticketed events like a regular movie theatre. "[Otherwise] we'd have to charge like $45 a ticket or something." Cooney said that what works for them right now is having the theatre booked out for private events where the clients pick what movies they want to watch. He said clients can choose whatever movie they like as long as they are not very recent movies, explaining that the licensing for playing more recent movies "is just too expensive." "Then of course there's concession sales, and all that on top of [the private bookings]," he said. "So it works out well." Delayed opening The Galt location was supposed to open in December 2024, but Cooney says he's had to deal with several challenges – some unique to his business idea. The first challenge was the manpower and budget. "We're very small and our budget is very small," he said. "I basically built it along with my parents and my brothers… it's just a family job." A more unique hurdle to his venture was dealing with building codes. More specifically, Cooney said there was nothing in the building codes for his version of a movie theatre. "There's movie theatres in the building code," he said. "But they require a lot of things that we would never need because… the code is written for 800-seat, massive movie theatres." Cooney says the back and forth between him and the Cambridge building department took a lot of time, adding another layer to the delay. CBC News reached out to the downtown Cambridge Business Improvement Area (BIA) for comments on Cooney's experience navigating building codes. Brian Kennedy, executive director of the downtown Cambridge BIA, told CBC News in an email that the BIA was not previously aware of the microcinema's opening, but that the BIA is "thrilled to see new arts and culture spaces" opening in downtown Cambridge. "The downtown Cambridge BIA strongly supports film and the addition of more exciting things to enjoy in our community," Kennedy said. "We've proudly supported events like the Grand River Film Festival in our core, and are encouraged by the growing momentum behind creative, independent film experiences like this one." Cooney says despite the challenges with his Galt location, he's thankful for the support of the Galt Gaslight District, which he described as very "patient" and "supportive." Future direction Cooney says with how much time he spent trying to bring the second location to life, he's already thinking of opening a third location. "I don't know when or where, but I think what I'd like to probably do is change the style a little bit," he said. "Maybe do something retro, like the 80s… lots of flashing lights and neon." For its first first public screening on Friday, the Galt location will be playing the 1944 classic film Gaslight, which follows the story of a young woman whose husband gradually manipulates her into thinking she is going insane. The Galt location will also be holding a free public screening on Saturday.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Look Ma, No Hands is a celebration of writing and a sensitive exploration of chronic pain
The first editorial cartoon that ever made me cackle felt like a personal attack. The graphic showed two black lines dressed in cowboy boots and 10-gallon hats, facing each other as if poised to draw pistols. A piece of paper – in my mind, a work in progress of some sort, perhaps an essay or newspaper column – rested beneath them. The italicized caption was perfect: 'This paragraph ain't big enough for this many em dashes.' Any editor of mine will confirm: I have an em-dash problem. As such, I've never hit 'purchase' on a product so quickly – a framed print of that cartoon sits proudly on my writing desk at home. Journalist and cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet, whose drawings for The Globe and Mail, The New Yorker and beyond often poke fun at the writing process, drew that genius em-dash portrait. Perhaps we share an affinity for over-using that particular piece of punctuation. But you wouldn't know Drolet had any trouble writing at all from her memoir, Look Ma, No Hands, which, through comics, stories and a heavy handful of aloof humour, details her experience of coming of age alongside her chronic pain. For the last decade or so, Drolet has bounced between Canadian cities, building her career as a writer and artist while jousting a herniated disc in her spine. While manageable with physical therapy and lifestyle changes, the condition – initially misdiagnosed as thoracic outlet syndrome – has for years caused Drolet extreme discomfort in her hands and arms. Not ideal for a journalist, or for a 20-something tasked with building IKEA furniture in third-floor walk-up apartments in Montreal. In Look Ma, No Hands, Drolet recounts her situationship with pain, and carefully describes how for most of her adulthood, her upper neck and back have interfered with her ability to thrive. It's an impressive debut in the vein of Emma Healey's Best Young Woman Job Book, but softer, less barbed. If Healey's memoir feels like sharing a night's worth of red wine with that author, Look Ma, No Hands feels like a warm mug of cocoa with Drolet. It's vulnerable and open as she recalls some of the most pivotal moments of her early twenties. As a freelance writer, Drolet's had some, uh, interesting gigs, the most memorable being her stint as a horse journalist, collating information about competitive horse racing into a daily newsletter. Throughout her memoir, she playfully captures the Groundhog Day-esque tumult of wielding words for a living – the simultaneous boredom and dread that accompanies being your own boss. (Even when the work at hand is horses.) Another highlight is the care with which she unpacks her queerness – the ways in which her chronic pain has shaped her capacity to be intimate with partners across the spectrum of gender. While Drolet's experiences are unique to her, one gets the sense she's not alone at the intersection between what her heart and mind long for, and what her body can tolerate. These chapters, in which Drolet turns inward (without once over-sharing), are perhaps Look Ma, No Hands's strongest stuff: They offer a side of her not easily captured in a cartoon or shorter essay. I'll be the first to admit I'm this book's target audience: a bisexual journalist in Canada who's closer to the beginning of my writing career than the middle of it. But Drolet's writerly voice is funny, punchy and dry, and makes no assumptions about the reader holding the memoir in their hands. Suffering from chronic pain? UofT researcher has some ideas to help you cope While established fans of Drolet's cartoons might chuckle at a few familiar turns of phrase, the memoir expands those snapshots of wit into something more concrete, less ephemeral. A time capsule for the zillennials in this country who lost crucial chunks of growing up to the pandemic. If you're unsure this book is for you, I recommend reading Drolet's viral garlic essay – about her love affair with jarred garlic catalyzed by the pain in her hands, published by The Walrus – or this excerpt from her memoir, about the forgotten thrill of calling your friends in a society propped up by e-mails and texts. If you like those stories, you'll love Look Ma, No Hands – and you'll join me in setting up social media alerts for when Drolet sells prints of her artwork. (I'm in the process of having her Severance-inspired animal portraits framed as we speak.) For years, Drolet has captured the quirks of this world through zesty drawings and trendy think-pieces. Now, with Look Ma, No Hands, she's proven she can make long-form writing work for her, with the help of dictation software and impish, hand-drawn characters, creatures who gaze at the words around them with cocked eyebrows and clever captions. No em dashes needed.
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Get ready to soar at Thunder Bay's Kite Festival this weekend
The annual Kite Festival in Thunder Bay, Ont., is back this weekend at Chippewa Park. The event features special kite flying areas, amusement rides, artisans, food vendors and more. The CBC's Matt Fratpietro met up with Karen Kadolph, the city's special events developer, to find out more — and to give one of the kites a test flight.
