The celebration of English-subtitled French films starts Nov. 2 and boasts highlights from worldwide festivals including Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
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“Cinemania is definitely growing,” said event director Guilhem Caillard. “It’s becoming bigger and bigger.”
He’s not just blowing hot air. Montreal’s little festival of French-language films, all shown with English subtitles, is becoming a big deal. Its 28th edition, which runs Nov. 2 to 13, boasts 112 films (including 60 fiction features) from French-speaking places around the world.
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Far from being a limitation, Cinemania’s unifying theme has made it the North American launch pad for many important European releases, as well as a prominent platform for Quebec film premières.
The festival has seen a substantial increase in public funding over the past eight years, according to Caillard, who says the growing support is confirmation of Cinemania’s rising profile as a go-to event for French-language cinema from here and abroad.
As usual, this year’s edition has highlights from top-tier festivals including Cannes, Venice and Berlin, and welcomes an array of special guests who will be on hand to present their films.
Opening the proceedings is Quebec director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s fourth feature, Chien blanc. The film is a U.S.-shot adaptation of the 1970 novel of the same name by Romain Gary, which provided a fictionalized account of his and his wife’s experiences in the ‘60s as they attempted to change the ways of a stray Alabama police dog trained to attack Black people on sight.
“It’s a film about the fundamental racism in the 1960s and ‘70s against Black people in the U.S.,” Caillard said, “and the difficulties of certain white people who want to share in the fight against racism but are in the delicate position of asking, ‘How can a fight that is not mine, historically, become so?’ and ‘How can I position myself?’ ”
The closing film is Quebec director Christian Duguay’s Tempête, starring French actors Pio Marmaï, Mélanie Laurent and Carmen Kassovitz in the story of a young woman who struggles to reclaim her horse-riding dreams following a serious accident at her parents’ ranch.
“It’s entertainment for the whole family,” Caillard said of the France-Quebec co-production, which was shot in Normandy and adapted from the youth novel Tempête au haras. “That’s Cinemania. We’re aiming for a wide audience. We have no pretensions. This has to be an event for everyone.”
Several notable films come from the international festival circuit, including François Ozon’s Peter von Kant, which opened the Berlinale in February. The campy, gender-switched update of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant stars Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani and Khalil Gharbia in a turbulent love triangle.
Ménochet is all over Cinemania, also starring in Chien blanc as well as Guillaume Renusson’s Les survivants, in which a man helps an Afghan woman (Franco-Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi) who has taken refuge in his cottage in the Italian alps. He also appears in Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s As Bestas (The Beasts), a psychological thriller about a French couple (Ménochet and Marina Foïs) who find themselves at odds with the locals after settling in the Galician countryside. Ménochet will be at the festival to introduce the movies.
Among the 23 films from Cannes at Cinemania this year are:
French auteur Arnaud Desplechin will present two films at Cinemania, both of which screened at Cannes: Frère et soeur, starring Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud as siblings forced to reunite following the death of their parents, which premièred in competition; and Tromperie, the story of a philandering writer, based on the Philip Roth novel Deception and starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux and Emmanuelle Devos.
Desplechin will also be the subject of a mini-retrospective, with two of his films, Un conte de Noël and Rois et reine, screening at the Cinémathèque québécoise. The director will sit down for a conversation with Barbeau-Lavalette, moderated by La Presse film critic Marc-André Lussier, Nov. 10 at 5 p.m. at L’Inis.
Elsewhere, Christophe Honoré’s semi-autobiographical gay coming-of-age tale Le lycéen stars Paul Kircher as a boy finding his way following the death of his father, with help from his mother, played by the ever-luminous Juliette Binoche.
There are 11 films produced entirely or partly in Quebec, screening as part of Cinemania’s new Quebec competition. Sébastien Marnier will be in attendance to present his black comedy L’origine du mal, co-starring the quirky Laure Calamy (from Netflix’s hit series Call My Agent!) as a woman seeking to connect with her family of origin. The France-Canada co-production, co-starring Suzanne Clément, premièred at the Venice Film Festival.
François Arnaud plays a young soldier returning from war in Franco-Ontarian filmmaker Michel Kandinsky’s La Switch. In Joëlle Desjardins Paquette’s first feature, Rodéo, a trucker in the midst of a separation kidnaps his nine-year-old daughter and hits the open road in hopes of partaking in Alberta’s fabled World’s Best Truck Rodeo. Caillard calls the film “a revelation.”
Marianne Farley follows up her Oscar-nominated short film Marguerite with her debut feature, Au nord d’Albany, a tense drama about a Quebec mother (Céline Bonnier) who runs away to the United States with her two children. And writer-director-composer Pierre Földes adapts a collection of stories by avant-garde Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in his animated film Saules aveugles, femme endormie.
Cinemania has some illustrious names on the jury of its official competition, Visages de la francophonie, presided over by French director Cédric Klapisch and Quebec actress Pascale Bussières, and including former SODEC president Monique Simard and Quebec filmmaker Ricardo Trogi.
Klapisch will also give a master class Nov. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the Sofitel Montreal Golden Mile hotel.
The festival hosts a spotlight on Luxembourg, including 20 films produced or co-produced by the country. Prime Minister Xavier Bettel will visit, with a delegation.
As he counts down to Cinemania’s 30th anniversary in 2024, Caillard is overjoyed to witness his event becoming a “festival for everyone,” including francophones, anglophones and allophones interested in French cinema.
“The vision of Cinemania is to build an inclusive event, using French-speaking culture as a bridge to other cultures,” he said, “and to use cinema as a way of discovering new cultures from around the world.”
AT A GLANCE
The 28th Cinemania film festival runs from Wednesday, Nov. 2 to Sunday, Nov. 13. For tickets and more information, visit festivalcinemania.com.
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