Montréal

Without even real­izing it, I’ve cre­ated a new tra­di­tion. For the third year run­ning, I will be spending a few days in Montréal seeing films at the Festival des films du monde. The Montréal World Film Festival, as it is known in English, is cel­eb­rating its 35th edi­tion with a wide-ranging pro­gram of almost 400 films from more than 70 coun­tries. The fest­ival takes place from August 18th through 28th, though I’ll only be there from August 19th through 23rd. Here are some films that are catching my eye so far:

• A Boatload of Wild Irishmen (Ireland/UK, 2011, Director: Mac Dara Ó’Curraidhín): An explor­a­tion of the life and work of Robert Flaherty (1884–1951), one of the pion­eers of doc­u­mentary filmmaking.
• She Monkeys (Apflickorna) (Sweden, 2011, Director: Lisa Aschan): Sexual rivalry between team­mates on an eques­trian vaulting team, good notices out of Berlin and Tribeca.
• Brand (Austria, 2011, Director: Thomas Roth): Brand, an author, falls in love with his ter­min­ally ill wife’s nurse and blun­ders into a dan­gerous spiral of pas­sion and jealousy.
• Calvet (UK, 2011, Director: Dominic Allan): The story of Jean Marc Calvet’s trans­form­a­tion from violent crim­inal to acclaimed artist.
• Dirty Hearts (Corações Sujos) (Brazil, 2011, Director: Vicente Amorim): Tensions arise in Brazil’s Japanese com­munity after Japan’s sur­render in World War II.
• Only Son (Fils Unique) (Belgium/France/Luxembourg, 2011, Director: Miel van Hoogenbernt): A man is forced to live with the father he hasn’t spoken to in 10 years, bringing back painful child­hood memories.

As always, tickets are a bar­gain (10 ticket book­lets are still just $65!) and it’s a per­fect appet­izer for TIFF.

Tagged as: #mwff11, Montréal

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I real­ized that all I’d posted about my trip to Montréal so far was my list of films to see and then a few reviews. I wanted to post a little bit about my trip and about the fest­ival exper­i­ence itself, in case any of you are thinking of making the journey in the future.

I returned this past Wednesday after spending five days at the 34th edi­tion of the Festival des films du monde. Started just one year after Toronto’s Festival of Festivals (now known as TIFF), Montréal’s oldest film fest­ival has remained the per­sonal pro­ject of Serge Losique, who has determ­ined to keep its focus on (mostly) European art cinema. Although it has gradu­ally been dwarfed by Toronto’s jug­ger­naut, it still offers a huge range of pro­gram­ming (430 films from 80 coun­tries!) and it has plenty to offer cinephiles who don’t mind doing their home­work. Not to men­tion that it takes place in a beau­tiful city and that tickets cost a frac­tion of what TIFF is char­ging these days.

One of the things I like about MWFF’s pro­gram­ming is that it fea­tures a pretty wide range of what I’d call more com­mer­cial offer­ings from a few European mar­kets. For instance, Quebécers are big fans of French cinema, so instead of only get­ting a few “important” films like at TIFF, this fest­ival offers everything from com­edies to thrillers, not only from France, but from places like Belgium and Spain as well. I also think that M. Losique and his pro­gram­ming team must be fans of the national cinema of places like Russia and the Balkan coun­tries, for those seem to have healthy rep­res­ent­a­tion in the pro­gramme, at least over the two years that I’ve attended.

I pur­chased the 10-coupon booklet for $65 (all taxes included) this year, and that also gave me a $5 dis­count on the pro­gramme guide, which nor­mally sells for $20. Compare this to TIFF’s prices ($160 plust HST and “fees” for 10 tickets, $32 plus HST and “fees” for the pro­gramme guide) and you’ll see what I mean about MWFF being a bar­gain. Apart from the cost, the fest­ival exper­i­ence is far less stressful as well. Unfortunately, that’s mostly due to the lack of crowds. It would be nice to see a few more sold-out screenings.

There are a few quirks. First of all, and this may be a problem with most fest­ivals, but the web site needs some work. It’s nav­ig­able, but it needs to be updated in a more timely way. Even as a news­letter sub­scriber, I wasn’t noti­fied when the pro­gramme was announced, nor was there a press release posted on the web site. For the record, the fest­ival announced the full lineup on August 10th, but I had to dig around on the site to finally figure out when it had been updated.

Another caveat is that, although most films are shown with English sub­titles, there are a few that are not. Last year, for instance, it was only when I was standing in line to get my ticket that I real­ized that the Spanish film I was anti­cip­ating was screening with French sub­titles only. The key is looking for the let­ters “s.t.a.” (sous-titres anglais) in the printed schedule or on indi­vidual film pages of the web site. It can be deceiving since every film descrip­tion in the pro­gramme guide and on the web site is trans­lated into English, leading one to believe that an English speaker can actu­ally see and under­stand every film in the fest­ival. It doesn’t happen often, but if you want to avoid dis­ap­point­ment, check the schedule carefully.

Normally, each film screens sev­eral times but there some that may only screen once, another reason to check the schedule before­hand when plan­ning your dates. Last year, I attended from Monday through Friday, and I found that many of the films I wanted to see were not pro­grammed on the week­days. Including a weekend this year turned out to be a good idea.

This year, I saw 9 films. I had a ticket for a tenth (The Myth of the American Sleepover, which I sub­sequently heard great things about), but opted for an early night instead. I haven’t written about all of them yet, but hope to get at least one more review posted before the mad­ness of TIFF begins.

I also got to enjoy a little of the city itself. I stayed in an apart­ment in the Mile End neigh­bour­hood owned by the mother of my friend Nicolas Gulino, a doc­u­mentary film­maker. Although I didn’t get to spend as much time with Nicolas as I would have liked, the apart­ment was in a fant­astic loc­a­tion, 5 minutes’ walk from both Fairmount Bagel, Montréal’s oldest bagel bakery, and Dieu du Ciel, home of some of the most sub­lime micro­brews I have ever tasted.

For the past two years, MWFF has proved to be a tasty appet­izer for TIFF. If you have the time, I’d recom­mend checking it out. I took the train, and VIA’s ser­vice is com­fort­able, con­venient to down­town, and rel­at­ively inex­pensive. They even have free wi-fi on the trains.

Here are a couple of photos. They’re not great, since my camera was on full zoom and so they’re a bit blurry. They are, in order, Pete Smalls is Dead (review) dir­ector Alexandre Rockwell, star Seymour Cassel, Limbo (review) dir­ector Maria Sødahl, stars Line Verndal and Bryan Brown.

Tagged as: #mwff10, Montréal

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For the second year run­ning, I will be spending some time in one of my favourite Canadian cities during the Festival des films du monde. The Montréal World Film Festival, as it is known in English, is cel­eb­rating its 34th edi­tion with a wide-ranging pro­gram of more than 400 films from 80 coun­tries. The fest­ival takes place from August 26th through September 6th, though I’ll only be there from August 28th through September 1st. Here are some films that are catching my eye so far:

• Pete Smalls Is Dead — star­ring Peter Dinklage, Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi, and dir­ected by Alexandre Rockwell (In The Soup)
• Wenecza (Venice) — Polish WW2 coming-of-age story about a boy whose dreams of vis­iting Venice are crushed by the war. Down in the flooded base­ment of his aunt’s man­sion, he’ll bring Venice to life.
• Bjarnfreðarson — based on a pop­ular Icelandic sitcom, title char­acter Georg is a son, a father and a com­munist mega­lo­ma­niac with a chronic com­pul­sion to con­trol his envir­on­ment, yet at the same time unable to con­trol his own life.
• Los cam­inos de la memoria — doc about the period of the Franco dic­tat­or­ship in Spain.
• Adem (Oxygen) — two young men with cystic fibrosis form a bond and help each other face the pro­spect of their early deaths by embra­cing life.

Best of all, com­pared to TIFF, this fest­ival is very afford­able and easy to nav­igate. Passports which get you into any film in the fest­ival are just $100 and books of 10 tickets are just $65.

Tagged as: #mwff10, Montréal

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