Sophia is a philosophy professor in Montreal and has lived as a couple with Xavier for 10 years. Sylvain is a carpenter in the Laurentians and must renovate their country house. When Sophia meets Sylvain for the first time, it’s love at first sight. Opposites attract, but can it last?
A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.
Saint Charles County, Missouri, December 1863. Edmond, a prosperous French perfume merchant, decides to flee to a safer place when the storms of the American Civil War start knocking at his door, threatening the life and fortune of his family.
Happy and accomplished, Ellias becomes the new artistic director of a famous French Haute Couture house. When he learns that his father, whom he has not seen for many years, has just died of a heart attack, Ellias goes to Quebec to settle the estate. The young creator will discover that he has inherited much worse than his father's fragile heart.
Sophia, a brilliant doctoral student, has always maintained a symbiotic relationship with her brother Karim. The arrival of a new lover in Karim’s life significantly alters their dynamic.
A young married woman from Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community finds freedom from the strictures of her faith through her relationship with a young man who is mourning the death of his estranged father.
A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl.
Two recently released prisoners learn to live in a sugar shack deep in the forest.
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.
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.
Clara and Nikolai meet at a sweat-soaked rave and end their night at his apartment. The first part of the film is an erotic and candid portrait of their lovemaking. When Clara tries to sneak out without saying goodbye, this typical hookup takes an unexpected turn...
1978. In a small village in Bas-St-Laurent, Guy’s tragic death is a shock for the Leblanc family. For many years, the real cause of his death is kept hidden from some members of the family, including his son David. The latter in turn starts his own family with his wife Marie. He lovingly raises his children Laurence and Frédéric, but deep within him harbours a persistent melancholy.
A cargo ship is stuck on the Canadian Saint Lawrence River for repairs. Traoré, an Ivory Coast mechanic is unjustly accused of causing the damage.
Actors Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clément, Monia Chokri, Gaspard Ulliel, Vincent Cassel, Niels Schneider and Melvil Poupaud discuss working with the young Canadian director Xavier Dolan, who has conquered the hearts of both cinema lovers and prestigious festival juries with his films. To French actress Nathalie Baye, he seems very experienced despite his young age, while Cannes Director Thierry Frémaux says he may be insolent, but everyone agrees he is passionate, creative, a perfectionist and... in a hurry.
May 20, 1980. After his father's passing, Raymond Tremblay, tax investigator, begins to suspect the funeral home of fraudulent activities. Accompanied by his daughter, little Lucy, he decides to go investigate in his native Saguenay against the backdrop of a referendum on Quebec's sovereignty.
An elderly woman's quiet routine is interrupted when the local chapel undergoes a makeover.
While a world war rages, Philippe, a draft-dodger from Quebec, takes refuge in the American West, surviving by competing in Charlie Chaplin impersonation contests. As Philippe makes his long journey home, he encounters various characters under the sway of a destructive madness borne of the chaotic times. His voyage, both violent and fascinating, is a hallucinatory initiation to the darker side of the American dream.
Éloi, whose father was killed in a hunting accident a year ago, is called to take part in a strange tribute ceremony in the country. There, immersed in a disturbing world of strange mystical codes, he learns that his father was tracking a huge buck with awe-inspiring antlers alongside the “Indian”. After several outstanding short films, Aurtenèche delivers a first feature that obliquely references the legend of Saint Hubert, who encountered the Almighty while hunting a stag. A cryptic thriller, hidden manuscripts, the quest for self-knowledge, psychotropic drugs: La Contemplation du mystère boldly shifts between moods and genres.
Ariane Lives in Val-d'Or. She will soon stay in the big city. So she gets ready to leave everything behind and to say bye to her brother. But the sexual tension between them, that they always struggle with, seems to take all the place.
Que ta joie demeure is not a documentary about being a slave to the machine, alienation, dehumanisation or exploitation. Sound and image, editing and dramatic structure are merely employed to transpose workshops and factory floors into the cinematic space so as to explore the bizarre environments that workers adapt to and with which they skillfully interact, as if humanity had never done anything else since time immemorial.
