Langue étrangère

Feature

Welcome to the French commune of Saint-Martial, where nightmares or sprouting mushrooms may spill your secrets. Returning for a funeral, Jérémie is greeted with the rough touches of a childhood companion and accused of exploiting a widow’s grief, sending him down an ever-contorting path of pansexual frenzy and escalating dread. At first, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) is friendly and inquisitive, avoiding the increasingly unhinged Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) but bonding over an alluring photo of the deceased with the widow (the legendary Catherine Frot) and cozying up to a local loner (David Ayala), pastis flowing. Soon, however, a disappearance sets him on edge, invasive police and a perceptive abbot (Jacques Develay) ratcheting up his paranoia. Allies appearing where he least expects them. So that, increasingly, it is unclear whether the village wants him excised or enmeshed there indefinitely. Sprung from the singular genius of Alain Guiraudie, known for his modern-day fairy tales with wicked senses of humour, Miséricorde is as genre-hopping as it is morally ambiguous—it’s Ripley meets The End of Eddy with the psychodrama of Saltburn. A riveting tale of the lengths we go to for love.

Made au CanadaCompetitionShort

Between loads of laundry at the corner laundromat, Cooper shares the tumultuous story of her gender reassignment journey.

Queerment QuébecCompetitionShort

Five thousand twenty five walks. Fifty-two miles of floors mopped. Seventy hours watching movie stars kiss. Alice, a headstrong elder dyke, navigates environmentally induced illness while she contends with her unique notion of legacy.

CompetitionFeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

Determined to breathe new life into the queer stock character of the sex worker, budding writer Max (masquerading as Sebastian) becomes a “digital hustler” while bathing in the words of Bret Easton Ellis. What starts out as novel fodder becomes a high-stakes balancing act between liberation and exploitation. Close-lipped and leery of scrutiny, even the publicness of social media, “wholesome boy next door” Max (Ruaridh Mollica) is able to act out his “desire to taste everything” in London bedrooms. First with older men, including the kind and curious Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), then with more daring configurations. But when shame unexpectedly creeps into his initial, unfettered view of the sex trade, Max finds everything from his book proposal to his very sense of self tested. Before he lets his obsession with how he’s perceived subsume him, he must decide what kind of writer he will be, what kind of lover, what kind of man. His finger on the cultural pulse, Indiewire’s LGBTQ+ Filmmaker on the Rise Mikko Mäkelä (A Moment in the Reeds, I+N31, 2018) pits the coldness of market forces against the beating of a warming heart to see which—in the 21st century—will endure.

CompetitionDocumentaryVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

Struck by “archive fever,” a gay transmasculine Iranian-American searches for the roots of his desire. Navigating with us through this steamy hybrid documentary, he comes into contact with trailblazing transcestor Lou Sullivan, the contemporary lived experiences of other queer men, and the eroticism of his own unique body. With the assistance of young non-binary archivist Kieran (Theo Germain), older transman Ahmad (Aden Hakimi) delves into Chicago’s LGBTQ+ archives and the past and present bathhouses of Boystown to explore his homosexual longing. He learns—as we do through the real-life interviews and the history of raids and radical action that nest within this fictional storyline—that there is no one answer. There are as many points of view as there are interviewees. Archival footage of Lou Sullivan, who openly identified as trans and gay as far back as the 1970s, shows that though these conversations are not new, they are still very much necessary, connecting transmasculine gay men with themselves and the larger community. Jules Rosskam’s narratively frisky and hugely affecting film is a celebration of complexity, working to dissolve rigid labels and authoritative permission when it comes to narrating one’s own sexuality.

CompetitionFeature

PORTUGUESE • ENGLISH ST | Wellington (defiantly nicknamed Baby) trades his detention centre cell for the streets of São Paulo, absorbed into the life of an in-demand “escort” with old school methods. Torn between this erotic father figure, two chosen families, and the mother who left him, Wellington must discern which link is the strongest. Against a backdrop of corrupt cops, vengeful kingpins, and Brazilian ball culture, maybe-18-year-old Wellington (João Pedro Mariano) falls for 42-year-old sex worker cum drug dealer Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), who has a son not much younger than Wellington being raised by lesbian mothers. The two share a charged, teasing bond with yo-yoing power dynamics. Wellington softens Ronaldo, schooling him in voguing’s ebullience and showing him his battle scars, while Ronaldo grounds his protege, giving him boxing lessons while doling out paternal advice and setting strict boundaries. Boundaries that Ronaldo is desperate to maintain and Wellington comes to resent when youthful potential and a biological parent draw him away. Propelled by Marcelo Caetano’s stylish direction, this gritty coming-of-age tale wrestles with themes of love and coercion, considering what’s still possible for a restless heart when a ‘baby’ becomes a man.

Made au CanadaCompetitionFeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

This homage to Bollywood spectacle and intergenerational bonds is a time-hopping, candy-coloured crowd pleaser that induces huge smiles and big laughs while also tackling the resonant themes of enforced gender roles, passive racism, and the seismic shifts of growing up. Azra (a stunning Amrit Kaur) lives in cohabitating sexual bliss with her girlfriend in Toronto in the VHS-popping 90s when she receives news of her father’s death. One voltaic match cut later and she’s on a plane for the funeral in Pakistan with her brother (Ali A. Kazmi), where her mother (Ms. Marvel’s Nimra Bucha) nitpicks and her culture shuts her out of the mourning process. Then another and we’re in 1969 Karachi, swept up in the whirlwind romance of Azra’s rule-breaking mother (also played by Amrit Kaur, underscoring mother-daughter parallels) and dashing father (Hamza Haq) before their tough transition to 1989 Nova Scotia. Each temporal hop peeling back another layer of how Azra’s family dynamic came to be. The Queen of My Dreams is itself a moviegoer’s dream, chock-full of eye-popping visuals, high production value, and fantastic fashion. Revealing how salvation can come in unlikely ways from unlikely sources.

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Émilie lives in a world of surveillance: her camgirl work; the camera phone lingering on a crush from afar; the headset affording her a drone’s perspective. The same drone that stalks each move she makes, offering inspiration, noting rivals. An unsolicited companion conspiring with or against her. A financially strapped transplant now living in the Paris suburbs, Émilie (ballerina Marion Barbeau) is thrust into a high-powered world when she is chosen for a renovation workshop with a prestigious architect (Cédric Kahn). Her classmates come mostly from “filthy rich” backgrounds, like cocky Olivier (Stefan Crepon), who wants Émilie as his conquest. But Émilie has shy eyes only for self-sufficient Mina (Eugénie Derouand), whose music builds like a “helicoid.” All along, a drone—unlike any known model—is watching her. Waiting for her next move and paying handily for the privilege. Taking the “killer’s point of view” made famous by films like Psycho and Friday the 13th to new heights, visionary director Simon Bouisson’s kinetic debut feature is a morality puzzle wrapped in a cutting-edge, goosebump-raising tech thriller. Getting us to consider: how complicit are we—as individuals, as a society—in our own undoing?

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Andrea Caulfield preys on talent. An influential curator, she digs her claws into Lex, an anonymous digital artist. She flirts. She flays. Though Lex, who is strung out by stress but fiercely attached to her craft, might be the wrong mouse for this cat. Under the Influencer is an audacious, jittery thriller full of dark surprises with much to examine and upend about the extractive nature of art and art purveyors. Anchored by her tireless assistant (Joy Sunday), Andrea Caulfield (Erin Matthews) is able to paint a lucrative face on anything, and is all about unconventional and abusive methods under the mantra that suffering and sacrifice breeds the best—and most saleable—art. Is she uplifting female and non-binary BIPOC artists or capitalizing on their narratives? Lex (Lauren Neal) believes in Andrea, trusting that she will help take her away from her thankless call centre job and into the art world’s upper echelons. Or maybe her lust for the older woman is clouding her judgement. When one of Andrea’s business tactics explodes Lex’s nerves, Lex’s mother (Margo Carre) advises her to stand up for herself—a permissive prospect for a woman coming unhinged.

Short

A very powerful short animated film on what it means to be a queer person in a cisheteronormative society.