IT ALL STARTS AT A FESTIVAL
Quebec filmmakers open doors at Cannes, Berlin
If Quebec cinema is taking over the world, it’s in large part thanks to the world’s biggest film festivals.
Xavier Dolan is the enfant chéri (and enfant terrible) of Cannes, where he is treated like a rock star, complete with paparazzi and rabid fans seeking his autograph. Dolan has become so big, it’s easy to forget that just 11 years ago he was an unknown 20-year-old director premièring his first feature, J’ai tué ma mère, as part of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, where it won three awards.
All but one of Dolan’s eight films have premièred at the festival, where he has become part of the contemporary lore — an A-lister some critics love and others love to hate.
For a filmmaker who has yet to really break through in the U.S. like fellow Quebecers Denis Villeneuve and Jean-marc Vallée, Dolan has built an impressive international career on his privileged relationship with the world’s most prestigious film festival.
But beyond him, and beyond Cannes, there’s an array of other festivals giving Quebec cinema an international spotlight.
“For sure, Cannes remains the most glamorous, best known and most efficient place to sell a film,” said producer Luc Déry, just back from the Berlinale, where he and his micro_scope partner Kim Mccraw accompanied Philippe Falardeau’s My Salinger Year. “Some films are better served in other festivals than Cannes, but that’s where we try or hope to go with almost all our films.”
Falardeau’s latest is a comingof-age film starring Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver. It was the opening film of the Berlinale; the coveted spot has proved beneficial despite early negative reviews from the industry trade publications and the Guardian.
“It’s a film that is accessible to a broad public,” Déry said. “Being in Berlin gave artistic credibility to the film, at a festival of grand auteurs. The opening slot positioned it as accessible and crowd-pleasing, so it seemed like a good combination.”
Déry and Mccraw have had great success on the festival circuit with movies including Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which premièred at the Venice Film Festival in 2010; and Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, which premièred at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011, where it won the audience award.
Both movies went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival before landing Oscar nominations for best foreign-language film.
“(Premièring at a major European festival) combined with going to Toronto after, which is where all the distributors are, becomes a very good way to launch a film internationally,” Déry said.
“For Canadian films, Toronto is super important and prestigious. But if your launch pad is just Toronto, it can be difficult to stand out.”
Meryam Joobeur premièred her short film Brotherhood at TIFF in 2018, winning best Canadian short. That set the filmmaker on a circuit that brought her to Sundance and over 150 other festivals before landing at the Oscars, where Brotherhood was nominated for best live-action short in February.
“Once we won the prize (at TIFF), it was a snowball effect,” Joobeur said. “The film started to travel to a lot of different festivals. It was a crazy journey, and very unexpected.”
Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century premièred in TIFF’S Midnight Madness section in September, and was named best Canadian first feature at the festival. Last month it screened at the Berlinale, where it won the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) prize in the experimental Forum section.
Rankin is still amazed by the international attention these festivals — and awards — have delivered to his wildly satirical biopic of former Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
“They brought a lot of visibility to this film, which would have been harder to achieve otherwise,” he said. “And I was able to meet all sorts of great artists I admire. On a personal and artistic level, it was really inspiring, and a wonderful tool for distributing the film and getting people to pay attention to it.”
The fact that both the Toronto and Berlin festivals have sections for left-field fare cleared the path for a jubilantly esoteric movie that wouldn’t have much of a shot in mainstream theatres.
“Midnight Madness is a section for films that are ostentatiously strange,” Rankin said. “The audience was really ready for my movie . ... And there’s a lot of space in Berlin for eccentric filmmaking, particularly in the Forum section. I see TIFF and Berlin as two great launching points for my film, in Canada and internationally.”
Denis Côté knows Berlin like the back of his hand. The Quebec director likes the festival so much, he dropped by this year even though he didn’t have a film screening. He was in Europe on other business, so it was a bit like dropping in on family.
“I don’t want to brag, but you just called Mr. Festival,” Côté said last week from Madrid, where six of his films were being screened at the Cineteca under the title Denis Côté: La reinvención constante.
Though Côté’s bold filmmaking style has found a home at the Berlinale, it was discovered and championed at the Locarno Film Festival.
“Locarno put me on the map,” he said. “I think my first six or seven films were Locarno premières. I have had one at Cannes (Carcasses in 2009 — the same year as Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère), and now six in Berlin.”
Alternative poster boy though he is, Côté admits Cannes is still the gold standard.
“Everyone, if you’re making films in Quebec, dreams of Cannes,” he said. “I’m no different from anyone else. I try Cannes first. Every time I’ve been to Berlin or Locarno, I’ve almost always tried Cannes. But the competition is so hard (to get into).”
Developing relationships with festivals, the people who run them and the industry insiders who attend them is a full-time job, Côté explained. Each festival has its own identity, and its own cliques.
“Locarno presents the films from all the big festivals. It’s the most edgy festival on the circuit, for sure. In Berlin, the edginess is in the Forum section, so I arrived there in the Forum section in 2012 with Bestiaire, and after that I slipped into the main competition. But a festival like Venice, I have never set foot in. I barely know them. They never answer my emails. I’m not part of the Venice identity.”
Catherine Bainbridge and her Rezolution Pictures team were given the royal treatment when her film Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (co-directed with Alfonso Maiorana) had its world première at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017.
It won the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for masterful storytelling.
“It was huge,” Bainbridge said, “probably the biggest honour we’ve had. We have had lots of great Canadian honours that are super important to us, but internationally Sundance was the one that brought us the most attention. By getting into Sundance, already you’ve got a mark of approval beside your film.”
Bob Moore would have to agree. The producer at Montreal documentary company Eyesteelfilm attends 10 international film festivals on average per year, with Sundance being the holy grail.
“The choice of where to première your film — you don’t always get a choice,” he said, “but there’s definitely a strategy that goes into it. We’re trying to give our films the best possible chance at a life outside festivals, so we try to think of festivals as a means, not an end. The reason you try to get into Sundance is so your film can get distributed as widely as possible.
“For us, the No. 1 film festival is Sundance. There are only 12 international docs in competition, so no matter what, you get the most possible exposure in the biggest market for docs right now in the world.”
Moore has brought films to Sundance seven times, beginning with Montrealer Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze in 2008, and doubling up this year with Nairobi filmmaker Sam Soko’s Softie and South African filmmaker Diana Neille’s Influence.
For the Canadian market, it’s all about Toronto’s Hot Docs, he says. But after that, the playing field opens up. Moore recently returned from the True/false Film Festival in Columbia, Mo. He was accompanying Montrealer Mia Donovan and her film Dope Is Death, about Black Panthers and community activists using acupuncture to cure heroin addiction in the ’70s and ’80s.
“I guess we chose True/false for the première because we felt like (this film) could benefit from the smaller, curatorial aspect of the lineup,” Moore said. “There are only a certain number of films, and the festival is growing in prominence. It felt like it made sense.
“Sundance is the only North American festival where it’s a no-brainer for everyone to go there. For every other one, there’s a special reason depending on the film. It’s not a strict hierarchy.”
Every time I’ve been to Berlin or Locarno, I’ve almost always tried Cannes. But the competition is so hard (to get into).