CHILDHOOD MEMORIES FRAUGHT WITH FEARS FROM OUTSIDE WORLD
Standout film The Demons explores personal struggles faced by 9-year-old
Inner struggle: Canadian film protagonists have long contended with the vastness and unforgiving temperatures and topography of their country, from coast to coast to coast.
But inner battles are also fought, none greater than those endured by 9-year-old Felix (terrific newcomer Édouard Tremblay-Grenier, shown here) in The Demons (3.5 stars out of 4), one of the standout selections for Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival, which runs Jan. 8-17 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. ( The Demons screens Jan. 12-13 at TIFF, but it’s also getting an earlier local theatrical run, starting Friday at the Royal Cinema.)
Torn by his parent’s marital woes, Felix fears the world in his Montreal neighbourhood of the 1980s, which award-winning director Philippe Lesage based on his own childhood memories. Felix thinks he might have contracted AIDS, the decade’s biggest medical scare.
He’s also terrified of news reports from the big city of a child abductor on the prowl, a threat neighbourhood troublemakers are all too willing to exaggerate.
But not all scary things are simply of the mind, as Lesage reveals in this superbly modulated drama that raises pulses while announcing the arrival of another great Quebec filmmaker.
Demons both personal and otherwise also animate the other quality offerings of the 2016 Canada’s Top Ten feature slate, all screening at TIFF and often including director Q&As: Alan Zweig’s HURT (Jan. 8-9); Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster (Jan. 9 and 16); Patricia Rozema’s Into the
Forest (Jan. 9-10); Philippe Falardeau’s My Internship in Canada (Jan. 10 and 14); Anne Émond’s Les êtres
chers (Jan. 11-12); Patrick Reed’s and Michelle Shepard’s Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr (Jan. 11 and 14);
Mina Shum’s Ninth Floor (Jan. 12-13);
Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant (Jan. 16-17); and Guy Maddin’s and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room (Jan. 16-17).
Ticket details are available through tiff.net.