Montreal, Wednesday, November 20, 2024 – The 27th edition of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) kicks off today and runs until December 1st, with several local and international guests in attendance. Audiences are invited to a 12-day journey of discovery, thanks to an imaginative program featuring around one hundred documentary works.
The festival gets underway on Wednesday, November 20 at 7 p.m. at Théâtre Outremont with the screening of Preparations for a Miracle, with Swiss director Tobias Nölle in attendance, thanks to the support of the Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal. With creativity and humour, this potent hybrid between activist documentary and science-fiction fable reflects on the notion of subjective views and explores in rare depth the ecological and technological changes that are redefining our world. A fascinating film from a filmmaker whose popularity is on the rise on the international documentary scene, owing to his narrative and aesthetic audacity.
A second screening of Preparations for a Miracle will take place on November 22 at Cinéma du Parc, again in the presence of the guest filmmaker. Tobias Nölle will also participate in a discussion entitled Between Reality and Dystopia, alongside Marianna Milhorat, director of Just Above the Surface of the Earth (For a Coming Extinction). This panel proposes a cross-dialogue between their two films which, with remarkable inventiveness, depict worlds both recognizable and distorted by environmental crises.
DAY 2 - Thursday, November 21
The second day of the festival will see the launch of two local films awarded at Hot Docs and presented as Quebec premieres at RIDM. The Soldier’s Lagoon by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa is the second instalment of a trilogy exploring the emblematic figure of Simon Bolivar in Colombia, in which the filmmaker takes a sophisticated, artistic look at the páramo and its history. Filmed in magnificent 16 mm colour film, the documentary explores its social, political, and environmental realities through the words of environmentalists, Indigenous guardians, miners, and others connected to the area. The connection to the place and its history is also explored in Okurimono by Laurence Lévesque, where, two decades after her mother’s disappearance, Noriko Oi returns to her hometown of Nagasaki to put her childhood home up for sale. As the rooms empty, this homecoming becomes an intimate quest, revealing fragments of a painful past buried beneath the rubble of history’s defining nuclear attack. As part of the Doc-to-Doc sessions, Laurence Lévesque has programmed the film L.A. Tea Time (2019) which will be screened for free on November 23, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Sophie Bédard Marcotte.
Festivalgoers will also have the chance to see the feature film La chambre d’ombres by Camilo Restrepo, a kind of symbolic huis-clos capable of accommodating the representations of war—or more broadly of violence—that manifest themselves off camera. The film is meant as an allegory reflecting on the distinction between reality and the images produced, and on the manipulation of reality by images. From 8:30 p.m., at the Cinémathèque québécoise’s Salle Norman McLaren, they will have an opportunity to attend two audiovisual performances Y'a matière au pays des éclairs combining soundscapes by musician Frédéric Boisclair with live 16mm projections by filmmaker Charles-André Coderre, and Suivre les traces with composer and improviser Ida Toninato.
The first screening of the retrospective Carlos Ferrand and the Grupo de Cine Liberación sin Rodeos: A Legacy of Political and Cinematic Activism will take place at the National Film Board of Canada - Salle Alanis Obomsawin. The cinematic pamphlet Visión de la Selva, which reveals the inequalities and condemns the repercussions caused by the destructive exploitation of the Amazon, and Una película sobre Javier Heraud, a portrait of the talented revolutionary poet who died in an ambush at just 21 years old, will be presented as a double feature, in the presence of filmmaker Carlos Ferrand.
DAY 3 - Friday, November 22
Presented as a World Premiere, the sociological film essay Le Plein potentiel by Annie St-Pierre (Fermières, Closing Film of the 2017 RIDM) paints a portrait of a society plagued by deep-seated anxieties but driven by a clear desire for individual transformation. The film shows us different personal growth strategies, while highlighting a universal quest for meaning. As part of the festival, Annie St-Pierre has also programmed a free screening of the film Le petit Jésus (2004) by filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, with whom she will participate in a discussion on November 24 as part of Doc-to-doc.
Two films from the Magnus Isacsson competition will be screened in the presence of the filmmakers. Presented as a World Premiere, Les yeux ne font pas le regard by Simon Plouffe immerses us in the sensory experience of five people who have lost their sight to weapons of war, while Wilfred Buck by Lisa Jackson masterfully intertwines the personal story of Cree Elder Wilfred Buck, an astronomy expert, educator, and keeper of Indigenous star knowledge.
Not to be missed, Silence of Reason from Yugoslav director Kumjana Novakova. Composed of evidence from the Foca Rape Camps trial, such as audio recordings and transcriptions of survivors’ words, this research-creation bears witness to the wartime rapes and sexual slavery perpetrated by military, police, and paramilitary personnel during the Bosnian War (1992–1995).
On the international side, the RIDM will have the pleasure to screen Campus monde by Ivorian filmmaker N’tifafa Y.E Glikou. This film, which transports us to an immigration consulting firm in Abidjan, gives a voice to those who dream of a life elsewhere and raises profound questions about the reasons that push them to leave. The film will be presented with the short films Clef du sol by Allia Louiza Belamri and Ibuka, Justice, an animated documentary by Justice Rutikara.
During this first weekend, the festival will also welcome several filmmakers from Mexico during the program Focus Mexico: Light Between the Shadows, presented in collaboration with the DocsMX festival. Xun Sero (Mamá), Sofía Peypoch (Earth Altars), Mariana Flores Villalba (The Invisible Frontier) and Carlos F. Rossini (Ciudad) will come to meet the public after the screenings of their works, in addition to participating in the panel Crossed Territory: Mexican Documentary Perspectives on the reality of contemporary documentary cinema of this country, hosted by filmmaker Nadine Gomez.
The Soirée de la relève Radio-Canada, which takes place at BAnQ this year, will showcase short documentaries by emerging Quebec filmmakers. A one-of-a-kind opportunity for audiences to take in the achievements of both current and new voices. This year’s six finalists are Auen tshil, auen nil by Frédérique Picard, The Body/transmutation by Bleue Pronovost-Teyssier, Ce qui se passe sous terre by Raphaëlle Bergeron, Emboîter leurs pas by Manuel Orhy Pirón, Les mains de ma grand-mère by Pascal St-Gelais, and Les oiseaux aiment les toits by Maxence Dumouchel and Charles Warren. The evening will continue at the Cinémathèque québécoise with the After de la relève À vos marques…party!, co-presented by Plein(s) Écran(s).
DAY 4 - Saturday, November 23
Filmmakers from every corner of the globe will be on hand to present their works to Montreal audiences. Samira El Mouzghibati will present Les Miennes, a return to her roots, as this filmmaker who immigrated to Belgium gathers her relatives in the living room of her parents, who have returned to Morocco, to break the silence surrounding traumatic family events. From Brazil, Mariana de Melo will accompany her short film The Silence of Iron, which questions the promises of progress made by a dominant industrial activity with diverse economic, social and environmental impacts. From Spain, Adrián Orr will present his film To Our Friends, a sparkling coming-of-age story that plunges us into four years of a young woman’s life as she transitions from adolescence to adulthood in the suburbs of Madrid.
Also in the heart of the suburbs, this time Parisian, Apprendre by Claire Simon carefully captures the daily life of the Makarenko elementary school, where students learn to express themselves, assert themselves, engage in dialogue, control their emotions and live together.
This fourth day of the festival will be marked by the Canadian Premiere of Simon & Marianne by filmmakers Martin Fournier and Pier-Luc Latulippe. This moving documentary follows Simon and Marianne during their final weeks together, when writer and college literature teacher Simon Roy, who suffered from incurable brain cancer, requested medical assistance in dying. The public will also be able to attend the World Premiere of Tout sur Margo by Yann-Manuel Hernandez and Margaux Latour, an autofiction which, in the style of Frances Ha, that takes an intimate look at the quest for meaning of Margo, an aspiring actress, whose life seems to slowly crumble around her.
DAY 5 - Sunday, November 24
In keeping with tradition, RIDM will run family screenings each Sunday morning at the Cinémathèque québécoise, with the aim of introducing budding filmmakers to documentary-inspired cinema. As a first activity, the Montreal-based artists’ studio la lumière collective will introduce youngsters aged 5 to 17 to experimental cinema with a program curated by Emma Roufs, a filmmaker and the co-director of the organization. The activity will be followed by a creative critical reflection workshop, which she will lead alongside Maude Trottier, the editor-in-chief of Hors champ.
Among the many guests attending this year, the festival is delighted to welcome from the Democratic Republic of Congo Nelson Makengo for the screening of Rising Up at Night, which presents the population of a region in Kinshasa plunged into darkness, in search of light; from the United States, Courtney Stephens for Invention, a freely conceived drama based on video archives, which focuses on the complexity of grief, through the use of autobiographical elements from co-writer and actress Callie Hernandez; and from Chile Celeste Rojas Mugica for An Oscillating Shadow, in which the filmmaker and her father, a dissident photographer in the Pinochet years, revive an intimate and political story through a fascinating sensory journey.
Two must-sees will also be presented during this fifth day: A Fidai Film by Kamal Aljafari, which delivers a bold act of cinematic reclamation, using footage seized by Israeli forces during the 1982 invasion of Beirut to resurrect the suppressed stories and struggles of the Palestinian people, and Sauve qui peut from Alexe Poukine, who takes a revealing look at medical training while reflecting on the healthcare system.
Finally, two Quebec filmmakers who won awards at previous editions of the RIDM will present their most recent films. Presented as a World Premiere, Parmi les montagnes et les ruisseaux by Jean-François Lesage follows two exiled Chinese artists as they discuss the authoritarian regime they fled, while Des chats sauvages by Steve Patry, a North American Premiere, immerses us into the world of Martin, a man who has isolated himself from the world.
The 27th edition of the RIDM takes place from November 20 to December 1st
at the Cinémathèque québécoise, Cineplex Odéon Quartier Latin, Cinéma du Musée, Cinéma du Parc, Cinéma Moderne, National Film Board of Canada, BAnQ and Théâtre Outremont.
To find out everything about the 2024 program and buy tickets: ridm.ca
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Media contact: Caroline Rompré | pixelleX communications | 514-778-9294 | caroline@pixellex.ca