In the opening film, Bye Bye Tiberias, director Lina Soualem portrays her mother, the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, who has a prolific career on both sides of the Atlantic. With his daughter, Hiam returns to his village in Galilee, an opportunity to see that family ties have resisted exile. The choice of film was made before the war between Israel and Hamas and presents another side of the region. “It’s a very touching, intimate film about the women in Lina’s family. The political question remains in the background,” says Marlene Edoyan, co-artistic director of RIDM.
Divided into 5 sections, 47 films, 18 feature-length and 29 short and medium-length films, are entered in competition. The film Caiti Blues is notably entered in the national feature film competition with three other promising Quebec works. Claude Demers (Ladies in Blue) offers Diary of a Father, where fatherhood is explored through archive images. After the exceptional Black Suns, Julien Elie pushes his reflection on Mexico further with La garde blanche. There we meet people with the courage to stand up against the colonialism devoid of humanity which colors part of Mexican society. Finally, in Má Sài Gòn (Mother Saigon), Khoa Lê follows in the footsteps of the LGBTQ community in Vietnam, her country of origin.
A festival also finds its meaning in some gems and sure values released in recent months at major events in the seventh art. From the official competition in Cannes comes Youth (Spring) by director Wang Bing, who turns his camera on young textile workers in China. Also presented in Cannes, the very musical Caiti Blues by Franco-Québécois Justine Harbonnier focuses on the fate of a young singer pursuing success in deep America. Left the Berlinale with two prizes in the Encounters section, The Echo by Tatiana Huezo narrates, with elements of fiction, the daily life of a remote village in Mexico where the children take care of the elders. We will also take a look at Pure Unknown by Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo, a film presented at Visions du Réel (Nyon) and dedicated to the fate of migrants in the Mediterranean.
Dance and choreography have long been part of the cultural history of Quebec, as evidenced by two RIDM documentaries exploring two distinct eras. In The Canadian Suite, filmmaker Olivier Godin, at Fantasia last summer with Ireland, notebook blue, films the work of choreographer Adam Kinner who highlights the famous ballet created in 1958 by Ludmilla Chiriaeff. A triple mise en abyme in which the actress Eve Duranceau participates. Furthermore, filmmaker Karl Lemieux offers, with Somehow Continue, an extraordinary and fascinating formal and sound exploration. His 16mm black and white film is dedicated to choreographer Dana Gingras as the latter coordinates the preparation of an open-air show in a Mile End park.
It was a time of passage and transition. Uncertainty and worry. In Eastern Europe, at the beginning of the 1990s, the communist bloc collapsed. The inhabitants, subscribed to strict rules of life, suddenly experience more freedom. The economies of these countries are looking for benchmarks. But is everything turned upside down at once? With a 16mm camera, filmmaker Chantal Akerman crosses this suspended world, from East Germany at the end of summer to Russia in the depths of winter. Contemplative, D’Est is woven from long, slow sequence shots, starting from the countryside and heading towards the cities and their long, paralyzed queues in gloomy settings. A unique screening of this film in restored version is included in the program.
Finally, the National Film Board (NFB) is offering four films where major social concerns resonate. Recently graduated in cinema, Romane Garant Chartrand presents Après-coups, an empathetic and pathos-free short film about the daily lives of residents in a home for abused women. In Koromousso – Big Sister by Habibata Ouarme and Jim Donovan, Canadian women of African origin demonstrate with candor and abandonment their desire to live and regain their bodies after excision. Toronto lawyer Mellisa Miller fiercely defends abused elderly people in Helene Klodawsky’s Hidden Time. While WaaPaKe (Tomorrow) by Jules Arita Koostachin is woven with moving testimonies from victims of residential schools. Despite the heaviness of the subjects, hope reigns everywhere.
