Unité Centrale

Three teenagers are shaken up by their first loves in the turmoil of their youth. At a time when others are conforming, they stand their ground and assert their right to love and be free.

Jeff is invited by his friend Max to travel deep in the woods and stay at the isolated estate of acclaimed director Blake Cadieux. He has high expectations for the trip: Cadieux is an artist he greatly admires – plus Aliocha, Max’s older sister, with whom he is secretly in love, is also coming. The untouched and hostile forest and the director’s huge cabin become the territory where the youthful search for ideals and freedom confronts the wounded egos of the adults.

On the last day of summer in a small seaside resort town, an older woman named Louise realizes that the last train has departed without her. She finds herself alone in the town, abandoned by everyone. As the weather turns for the worse and with no one to keep her company, louise must rely on her past to help her survive the present.

A lost cat, a giant talkative frog and a tsunami help a bank employee without ambition, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives.

While Montreal is in the throes of a string of kidnappings targeting young boys, ten-year-old Felix is finishing his school year in the seemingly quiet suburb where he lives. A sensitive boy with a vivid imagination, Felix is afraid of everything. Little by little, his imaginary demons begin to mirror those of the truly disturbing world around him.

Navigating the treacherous social tides of high school, Marine is cut adrift by Océane, her older sister who’s caught in the thrall of an older man. Meanwhile, their mother struggles to keep her head above water.

Autumn, somewhere in Copenhagen: a pair of students, Emil and Victoria, can’t make their relationship work but can’t quite break up either. Philippe, who has just lost his job as a professor in a film school, followed by his apartment, can’t cope with the way his affair with a young literature student ended and now he’s crashing with some of his old students, including Emil. Naturally, he soon meets Victoria.

Alex, a six-year-old boy from Quebec, is oblivious to the thousands of refugees entering Canada illegally to avoid deportation. Yet when his father takes him along to a vigilante patrol in the woods to hunt out trespassing migrants, something inside him tells him to rebel.

Sigismond Langlois is submitted to a psychiatric evaluation on account of his violent behavior. He just turned 18, and pretends he was born with no image. Throughout the questionnaire, he recounts the peculiar existence of a young man who never saw himself, neither in reflection nor on photo, to the point of sometimes doubting of his own existence. But today, Sigismond is determined to make himself heard.

A passionate young painter, lives a regimented life working long hours on little money. Women are seemingly of little interest to him, until he notices a young woman living across the street. His life is soon turned upside down as his days become but quests to catch a glimpse of her.

Determined to stop drinking, Joseph moves into a friend's house and convinces his ex-wife Emma to join him. In the troubled times of Quebec independence referendum, this is the account of their stormy reunion.

When Gérard finds a dead raccoon in his front yard, the old man becomes strangely distressed, shaken by thoughts of his own demise. Jocelyne watches the despair of her husband grow along with his obsession with the animal’s body, and his anguish takes root in her own mind. After a night of torment, they decide to go and bury the raccoon on the land where their house once stood in Joutel, a former mining town deserted since 1998. When they get there, the boreal forest is creeping in on the ruins of her former house, plunging Jocelyne into a deep nostalgia. Here, after a morbid picnic marking the raccoon’s burial, the couple meets a mystical being who leads them to make peace with their inner demons.

A young woman lives with her sleeping husband. Prisoner of her loneliness, she refuses to accept that this man is only a memory.

A deep feeling of nostalgia takes hold of Ali following his mother's death, causing him to slowly drift away from family life. Although Gabrielle senses her husband's distress, she fails to console him. In an attempt to reconnect with his roots, Ali travels to Arwad, an island located off the Syrian coast. Leaving Montreal and his family behind, he is accompanied by Marie, his mistress, who is discovering the island for the first time. After an unexpected turn of events, the confrontation between Gabrielle and Marie will become inevitable.

Bad Seeds takes us to a bizarre world populated by carnivorous plants that can change shapes the way a chameleon changes colours. The veteran director of deftly connects growth with rivalry and evolution with competition, crafting an increasingly shocking duel that’s peppered with allusions to the western, the Cold War, board games, and much more.

A lone gunman perched on a rooftop grows bored while awaiting his next victim. A mother records a video for an audition for a televised singing competition. A young girl carries water containers and must cross a dangerous area before nightfall. Distant explosions echo, nothing alarming. Time stands still, allowing the three figures to find refuge in their luminous dreams. The sun will set soon, carrying them away. Rituals Under a Scarlet Sky tells the tale of a daily life where hope survives despite the tragedy that attempts to engulf it.

It is through the voice of Salim, newly arrived in Canada, that we follow the journey of six immigrants who, cramped in a van, earn their living by distributing advertising leaflets. Despite their diverse origins, they share the same nostalgia for their native land and the same daily worries, which they approach with scathing humor. Among them is a young boy of Russian origin, Sacha. The biting cold and the endless stairs will get the better of his tenacity. However, Sacha will come to surprisingly break the routine of Salim and his companions...

Edgar works in a pig slaughterhouse. He loves opera and he loves Ginette, the stripper of his dreams. Edgar is about to ask her to marry him when he surprises her bedding her boss. In shock, he loses his voice and unfortunately finds himself with the voice of a pig.

Built around 3 portrait sessions where young people become photographers before giving their lives during various suicide operations, LE PETIT OISEAU VA SORTIR attempts to present the contrast between the banality of the photographic gesture and the seriousness of the gesture that the 3 main protagonists are preparing to perpetrate.

It is winter in Russia during World War II. Two axis soldiers, one German, one Italian, are lost in the vast snow-covered country. Out of strength and without shelter they reach a forest, where a Russian adolescent discovers them.