Eight Québec films to premiere at MoMA's Canadian Front

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

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Philippe Falardeau's drama Monsieur Lazhar, Canada's Academy Award entry this year in the foreign-language category, will kick-off the 9th annual edition of Canadian Front 2012 at MoMA on March 14.

Loupe

This year's selection of 11 recent Canadian features and one short is also distiguished by a larger number of comedies than usual— from Canada's East (Andrew Bush's Roller Town, from Nova Scotia) and West (Aaron Houston's Sunflower Hour, from British Columbia) coasts, and from the more traditional filmmaking centers of Quebec (Ken Scott's Starbuck) and Ontario (Ingrid Veninger's I Am a Good person, I Am a Bad Person).

Minority communities are strongly represented as well, especially in Ivan Grbovic's debut film, Romeo 11, about Montreal's Lebanese community, and Yves Sioui Durand's Mesnak, which was shot in part in the Innu language.

Among those making their return to MoMA are the Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kanuk, with Sirmilik, a short film shot in Nanvit's National Park; and Jean-Marc Vallée, whose melodrama Café de Flor stars Vanessa Paradis and was shot in both Canada and France.

Two unusual and compelling documentaries complete the selection: Briggite Poupart's Over My Dead Body examines the compromised life of Montreal choreographer David St-Pierre, and Carl Leblanc's The Heart of Auschwitz investigates an extraordinary object in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.

Complete listing:
Canadian Front 2012 / MoMA