Canada

  • John Carl Buechler – Troll (1986)

    1981-1990CanadaFantasyHorrorJohn Carl Buechler

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    An evil troll, Torok, the transformed state of the ex-husband of an old friendly witch named Eunice St. Clair, has chosen her apartment building to be the heart of the restoration of the world he once knew. To do this he uses an Emerald ring, and takes possession of a little girl named Wendy, whose brother Harry immediately suspects something wrong. Torok, often in the form of the little girl, goes into each occupant’s apartment, hideously transforming people into plant pods.Read More »

  • Bruce La Bruce – Gerontophilia (2013)

    2011-2020Bruce LaBruceCanadaComedyRomance

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    Lake is an unusual boy: he is a young man with an old soul who discovers he has an odd fixation on the elderly. Realizing that some day, if fate allows, he will be one himself, he is particularly fascinated by old men. He imagines their age to be a beautiful thing and recognizes how these men were once young and vibrant and attractive, as he is now. Although Lake has a girlfriend his own age, named Desiree, he wonders sometimes if his fixation on old men is unnatural and unhealthy – perhaps even sexual. When his mother, who is a nurse, takes on a management job at an old folks home, Lake jumps at her offer of a summer job as an orderly there. Gradually, Lake comes to discover that the old people in the institution are being given psychotropic drugs to keep them in a catatonic state. Lake befriends one old man in particular, Mr. Peabody, who still seems to have some fight left in him. They begin to form a strong bond. Mr. Peabody charms Lake with romantic stories of his youth and …Read More »

  • Valerie Buhagiar – Tell Us the Truth Josephine (2006)

    2001-2010CanadaExperimentalShort FilmValerie Buhagiar

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    DVD box wrote:
    Tell Us The Truth Josephine is an experimental drama about a Maltese immigrant woman walking across Canada on stilts in search for home. Her journey, however, is haunted by stories of her past. It is only once she accepts these stories, and the truth, that she can land and truly find home.Read More »

  • Rafaël Ouellet – Camion (2012)

    2011-2020ArthouseCanadaDramaRafaël Ouellet

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    From Toronto International Film Festival website :

    Truck driving is all sixty-year-old widower Germain (Julien Poulin) has ever known. When he is involved in a head-on collision that leaves a woman dead, his quiet life is suddenly thrown into a tailspin. Though he was not at fault, the remorse he experiences is debilitating, leaving him severely depressed and unwilling to get behind the wheel again.

    Deeply concerned for his father, Germain’s son Samuel (Patrice Dubois) puts his job in Montreal on hold, travels to New Brunswick to collect his estranged older brother Alain (Stéphane Breton), and together they drive to their rural Quebec hometown to care for their stricken father. The brothers, however, have their own issues: reliable Samuel is still lovelorn decades after a teenage breakup, while Alain, an inveterate raconteur and incurable womanizer, drifts aimlessly from town to town, incapable of settling down.

    As the men struggle to reconnect, it becomes apparent that all three are stuck in the past for different reasons, unable to move forward. Slowly, the brothers revive Germain’s will to live, and in the process discover fresh directions for their own lives.Read More »

  • Robert Lepage & Pedro Pires – Triptyque (2013)

    2011-2020ArthouseCanadaDramaRobert Lepage and Pedro Pires

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    Triptych is a contemporary urban saga that tells the story of Michelle, a schizophrenic bookseller, her sister Marie, a singer and actress, and Thomas, a German neurologist and Maries future husband.

    Against a backdrop of written and visual poetry, this film depicts three pivotal moments in the lives of these characters through the subjects of creation, mental equilibrium, social interaction, solitude, and emotional response, all the while maintaining the essence of the plays theme, which deals with the human voice. Its a study of the relationship humans have with speech and communication in all its complexity and variations. These three lives become the primary locus of personal identity and emotion, with their many manifestations, variations, and implications, through each characters inner development and burning desire for self-expression.

    Triptych is a cinematographic adaptation of Lipsynch, directed by Robert Lepage.
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  • Xavier Dolan – Tom à la ferme AKA Tom at the Farm (2013)

    2011-2020CanadaDramaThrillerXavier Dolan

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    Tom at the Farm (French: Tom à la ferme) is a 2013 psychological thriller directed by Xavier Dolan. The film is based on the play of the same name by Michel Marc Bouchard. It was screened in the main competition section at the 70th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2013, and also at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in the Special Presentation section. At Venice the film won the FIPRESCI Prize.

    Tom, a young advertising copywriter, travels to the country for the funeral of his boyfriend Guillaume. There, he is shocked to learn that no one knows who he is, nor his relationship to the deceased. Guillaume’s brother soon sets the rules of a twisted game. In order to protect the family’s name and the deceased’s grieving mother, Tom now has to play the peacekeeper in a household whose obscure past bodes even greater darkness for his “trip” to the farm.
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  • David Blyth – Red Blooded American Girl (1990)

    1981-1990CanadaDavid BlythExploitationHorror

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    Plot: Owen Augustus Urban III, a creator of designer drugs, is hired by Dr John Alcore, the founder of Life Research foundation, who wants his help in obtaining a cure for AIDS. But Owen discovers that unorthodox experiments are being conducted at Life Research. He befriends one volunteer Paula Bukowsky. But then she is bitten by a crazed test subject and Owen finds that she is starting to transform into a vampire.

    Quote:
    Richard Scheib wrote:
    Red Blooded American Girl conducts the conceptually intriguing idea of a scientific exploration of vampirism. Scientific vampirism has been used in vampire literature before and on screen in the interesting Thirst (1979) and since in fine works like Ultraviolet (1998) and Blood (2000). This is the first full-blooded treatment of the theme and offers up some intriguing ideas – with requisite AIDS metaphors and the idea of salvation via blood transfusion – even if they are somewhat unfulfilled.Read More »

  • Pascale Ferland – Ressac (2013)

    2011-2020CanadaDramaPascale Ferland

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    After searching in vain for a job in the small seaside town where he was born, Édouard is forced to head off to the big city. He reluctantly leaves behind his mother-in-law Dorine, his wife Gemma and his beloved daughter Chloé. The weight of his absence is felt by all three women. Soon the news arrives of his unexplained death.

    Beyond the confusion, guilt and anger that accompany such an event, there is the love, hope and idealism of youth, unfulfilled desires and the dreams they share of a better future … but when Gemma discovers the unusual legacy left by her late husband, she thinks she’s finally found the key to happiness. But what is happiness in the eyes of others? And how do we achieve it?Read More »

  • Claude Jutra – À tout prendre (1963)

    1961-1970ArthouseCanadaClaude JutraDrama

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    Pierre Jutras wrote:
    At the height of the Quiet Revolution, Claude Jutra brought Quebec cinema directly into modernity.

    Take It All (1963) is the first autobiographical feature film made in Quebec using direct cinema methods and techniques. With its unusual aesthetics focusing on the free and intimate expression of the main protagonists, Claude and Johanne, the film was received with a mix of astonished admiration and righteous indignation. Jutra had dared to recreate on screen his own love story with Johanne Harrelle, one of the first black models on the Montreal and New York fashion scene. It was the first time in America that a bed scene was filmed with a white man and a black woman. Both freely engage in mutual confession, and the game of truth leads Johanne to inquire about Claude’s possible homosexuality. They also have to face the agonizing dilemma of abortion when Johanne gets pregnant.
    Read More »

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