Françoise Berd

La Belle apparence

Tragicomic portrait of a bar's owners and patrons in a poor Montreal neighbourhood.

A film-opera divided into nine segments, Au pays de Zom tells a day in the life of Mister Zom, a capitalist infatuated with his own person, whose conformism is only matched by his artistic velleity. A thematic sequel to his movie filmed with Mexican peasants, here Groulx asks, by making a business man sing, a second question on happiness: this time about the ones for whom happiness is linked with the possession of overabundance. He delivers, by developing the theatrical dimension with great emphasis, a social pamphlet with a strong satirical charge that he himself qualified as a "neo-surrealist fantasy".

The nightmares of a poor and lonely delivery man.

In Rome, fascist supporter Emanuele attends a parade commemorating Adolf Hitler's historic meeting with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, leaving his apolitical wife, Antonietta, to tend to household duties. Antonietta encounters a man, Gabriele, who appears surprisingly nonplussed by the political event. Over the course of the day, the two forge a close friendship that will forever change their perceptions of life, love and politics.

Contrecoeur is a film using fantastic realism to talk about psychology, drift and love. Three characters must define themselves in an enclosed space, a truck trapped in a snowstorm, and dream of somewhere else to find each other.

A television host tries to react to the process of alienation that the public is subjected to from variety shows.

A young boy learns the rituals of what his father and his friends perceive as manhood on a weekend hunting trip.

In a poor neighborhood, teenagers plot an assassination while a party is being organized for the local usurer.

In Quebec 40s, orphans or abandoned children are placed in a gigantic psychiatric hospital where children were locked. Were they sick? No, they simply had no family. To escape this oppressive universe, they created a parallel world: the institution's basement where, in a maze of tunnels, they founded an independent company, with its rituals, spells. A young girl, Agnes, reigns over this underground world that adults seem to tolerate.

A married man and his family take in his brother, who is coming out from a religious order. They decide to realise the old family dream, migrate to Florida. But it won't be as easy as they think.

In a little village at the end of the 1890's, a young woman offends all the 'right-thinking' villagers by allowing men in her house in the absence of her husband. When he is found dead, all of the suspicion is directed towards the liberal woman. She is judged more for her morality then for the crime she is accused of. Her culpability is still a subject of debate today.

During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called Quintet. For one small group, this obsession is not enough. They play the game with living pieces, and only the winner survives.

When a dead newborn is found, wrapped in bloody sheets, in the bedroom wastebasket of a young novice, psychiatrist Martha Livingston is called in to determine if the seemingly innocent novice, who knows nothing of sex or birth, is competent enough to stand trial for the murder of the baby.

Manon, is obsessed with famous writer Chester Celine, who hails from Wyoming. Manon learns Chester is coming to town and becomes a slinky, svelte temptress

A writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Québec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth d'Aulnières: her marriage to Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska; his violent murder; and her passion for George Nelson, an American doctor. Passionate and evocative, Kamouraska is the timeless story of one woman's destructive commitment to an ideal love.

The wife of photographer J.A. Martin decides to go with him in his tour of the hard Canadian countryside at the turn of the century. She hopes the intimacy will revive their marriage.

Chez Denise