Passionate filmmaking and extraordinary performances distinguish the New York theatrical premieres of eight new feature films in the fifth edition of Canadian Front. Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game, a thrilling melodrama from Nova Scotia starring Danny Glover and Rossif Sutherland, opens the program with a special weeklong run. Two of the films in the series are first features by young women who adopt documentary techniques to shape narratives about people—a young boy in Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s Le Ring and a mother in Helene Klodawsky’s *Family Motel*—coping with dangerous surroundings. Veteran filmmakers include Denys Arcand, whose sly comedy Days of Darkness closed the Cannes International Film festival this year; Bruce McDonald with The Tracey Fragments, featuring Ellen Page (Juno) in a brutal, fractured portrait of a teenager; and Bernard Émond, whose Summit Circle is a portrait of despair. The comic spirit is represented by Laurie Lynd, whose Breakfast with Scot subverts traditional notions of masculinity, and Stephane Lafleur, whose Continental, A Film without Guns presents an “extra brut” perspective on alienation and its absurdities.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, and presented in association with Telefilm Canada.