Sylvain Buffoni

When circumstances conspire to leave Louise, an established Quebec painter, and Ahmed, an aspiring Lebanese-Canadian actor, sharing a remote lake house, the tension rarely abates. Understandably, Louise resents her solitude being trespassed on, particularly by someone whose backstory is hardly airtight.

One day, for no apparent reason, a cop kills 11 children. The same day, horror novelist Thomas Roy tries to commit suicide after cutting his fingers. At first glance, nothing seems to link the two events – until Dr. Paul Lacasse, a disillusioned psychiatrist, takes over the case. Prompted by his colleague Jeanne, a fan of Thomas Roy, Dr. Lacasse investigates the writer’s past. Hounded by a gossip columnist, Dr. Lacasse uncovers a series of troubling facts that bolster his convictions about the case. As he tries to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle in order to better treat the famous writer, Dr. Lacasse is dragged further and further into a series of events, with terrifying consequences.

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.

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.

La ligne brisée

Everyone can have a bad day now and then, but we meet Valerie on a morning that divides her life neatly into before and after. It took one inconsequential setback – a silly thing, really – to cause a slight delay in Valerie’s schedule, resulting in a regrettable distraction, causing an unfortunate incident, which leads her to the police station….. making her miss the single most important event she had on her agenda: The Meeting! That’s when the dam breaks. All that control to build the fragile framework of her life collapses instantly. Valerie gets fired, is obliged to restrain her lifestyle, and now with the shared custody of her son in question, Valerie has to review her priorities and reorganize her life.

The daily lives of the personnel of the St-Vincent hospital in Montréal.