Breaking Point: Canada/Quebec - The 1995 Referendum

From the first minutes after his inauguration, the newly elected president wants to translate his promises and his campaign project into action. "Change is now", "Change life", "Together everything becomes possible": all campaign slogans promising a break with the past, a change. The first few months were decisive: it was a matter of making a mark, asserting one's style, imposing one's authority and taking the first measures, those that would make a mark on public opinion and set the first lines of the political narrative in history. From 1959 to 2017, the eight successive presidents have acted without delay. Thanks to the many witnesses and actors of these first hundred days, the film retraces the stakes and decisive moments that marked the beginning of each mandate.

Chris Marker, intrigued by the sight of yellow cats perched on walls on the streets of Paris, films the major national and international sociopolitical events of the early 2000s.

At the close of Jacques Chirac's life, politician Jean-Louis Debré has wished to make a film to celebrate his friend, to tell the story of their friendship and professional understanding, and to make an intimate portrait of the former President of France through the accounts of a few very close friends. Thanks to Jean-Louis Debré's presence, Claude Chirac and some of Jacques Chirac's closest friends, famous or unknown, agreed to talk to the camera, sometimes for the first time, to evoke their untold-before memories and tell about the moments that bonded the two men for a lifetime.

During the EU enlargement negotiations, Danish journalist Christoffer Guldbrandsen accompanied his country's prime minister, Fogh Rasmussen, during the three-month negotiations. What looked like a conventional documentary turned out to be a tangible political scandal: Rasmussen wore an invisible microphone at many meetings and thus "recorded the true opinion of his counterparts behind the scenes". The close-up film ensures "more openness about the background of politics", since not only the official announcements were documented, but also not so statesmanlike statements about problems and people."

The Maysles' third film about the artists sees them trying to get three projects off the ground: wrapping the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris; wrapping the Reichstag; and surrounding eleven man-made islands in Florida with pink plastic sheets. As the latter is the only one that gets approval, it gets the bulk of this film.

In May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became President of the Republic and wanted to bring about a new era of modernity. One of his first decisions was to break up the ORTF with the creation of three new television channels: TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3. Three new public channels but autonomous and competing. It is a race for the audience which is engaged then, and from now on the channels will make the war! This competition will give birth to a real golden age for television programs, with variety shows in the forefront. The stars of the song are going to invade the living rooms of the French for their biggest pleasure. This unedited documentary tells the story of the metamorphosis of this television of the early 1970s, between freedom of tone, scandals, political intrigues and programs that have become mythical.

The co-founder of the Gamma press agency, Raymond Depardon, created this documentary of press photographers in Paris and their subjects by following the photographers around for one month, in October, 1980. In-between long hours waiting for a celebrity to emerge from a restaurant or a hotel, boredom immediately switches to fast action as the cameras click and roll when the person appears. The reaction to the gaggle of photographers is as varied as the people they often literally chase all around town. While some of the celebrities, such as Jacques Chirac who was mayor of Paris at the time, are perceived as comical caricatures, others are shown simply going about ordinary pursuits - including Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly, and Jean-Luc Godard.

In 1995, Quebec faced a harrowing choice: remain part of Canada or establish itself as a separate country. The future of a nation and a lifelong dream were at stake in this referendum. Through interviews and analysis, journalists Antoine Robitaille and Dave Noël delve into the secret strategies, fierce rivalries, and political maneuvering of both sides.

From coast to coast, from St. John's, Newfoundland to Vancouver, British Columbia, Jacques Godbout films a documentary chronicle of the political turnaround that was to follow the Meech Lake Accord. Following the Meech referendum, Quebec and Canada found themselves at an impasse after a long and ultimately fruitless negotiation, various social and political actors spoke out. Their comments, linked to film clips on the lives of important Canadian politicians (Sir Georges-Étienne Cartier, John A. Macdonald, Louis-Joseph Papineau...), draw parallels between the speeches of yesterday and those of the post-Meech era.

This documentary revisits the month of January 1998, which plunged the province of Québec into darkness. It looks back at the ice storm that dragged on for thirty-five long days, depriving thousands of Quebecers of electricity.

Through never-before-released interviews, this documentary provides an opportunity to (re)discover Jean Lapierre: the colleague, the politician, the friend, and the family man. We follow his journey as a child growing up on the Magdalen Islands to becoming a well-known one-of-a-kind politician and commentator...to just before the March 2016 airplane crash that took his life.

October, 1995. The most important political event in recent Canadian history, the Quebec vote on sovereignty, is about to unfold. During the tense days leading up to the referendum for independence, 23 filmmakers from the NFB's English and French documentary studios take their cameras into the streets and homes of Quebeckers. Culled from 250 hours of footage, Referendum is an emotional portrait of a profoundly divided society. In a collage of powerful moments, the video recaptures the emotions of that time and measures them against today's political agenda. Implicit is the question: What next?

Carl Leblanc records the memories of politician Lucien Bouchard. As a unique witness to Quebec's contemporary history, Bouchard recounts the key events of his career, from his early years up to his time as Prime Minister.

A cabdriver and a cop race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.

300 years of a remarkable musical instrument. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin has traveled through Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake. In Montreal, Samuel L Jackson plays an appraiser going over its complex history.

When her older brother Thaddeus is mysteriously kidnapped by the Spellbinder, 11-year-old Lydia sets off to find him in the Misty Sea. Picked up by the crew of a flying ship, the Dolphin, Lydia becomes the apprentice of Ambrosia, a Stargazer. Ambrosia is trying to find other children who have disappeared, including her own son. Determined to solve the mystery, Lydia must learn stargazing magic and ready herself to confront the Spellbinder.

On the night of 16 July 1942, ten year old Sarah and her parents are being arrested and transported to the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of other jews are being sent to get deported. Sarah however managed to lock her little brother in a closet just before the police entered their apartment. Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, gets the assignment to write an article about this raid, a black page in the history of France. She starts digging archives and through Sarah's file discovers a well kept secret about her own in-laws.

How did Sarah and Victor get along for more than 45 years? Who was this enigmatic woman living in the shadow of her husband? Love, ambition, betrayals and secrets feed the story of this extraordinary couple, as they experience both the large and small moments of the last century's history.

A clueless cheerleader falls for a mysterious young man who tells her he's a secret agent. But the truth is much simpler and darker.

A breed of humans with dangerously powerful telepathic abilities -- the scanners -- are being recruited by a corrupt police commander, John Forrester, in his crusade to take over the city.

A beautiful stripper hires renowned criminals to exact revenge on those who raped her in her motel room.

A deranged prison warden with a nasty habit of killing escapees forces the boyfriends of his teenage twin daughters into a shotgun wedding, after they claim to be pregnant. All hope seems lost, until the husbands hatch a madcap plan to rob a money train to freedom.

In this belated sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire', middle-aged Montreal college professor, Remy, learns that he is dying of liver cancer. His ex-wife, Louise, asks their estranged son, Sebastian, a successful businessman living in London, to come home. Sebastian makes the impossible happen, using his contacts and disrupting the Canadian healthcare system in every way possible to help his father fight his terminal illness to the bitter end, while reuniting some of Remy's old friends, including Pierre, Alain, Dominique, Diane, and Claude, who return to see their friend before he passes on.

A heterosexual man pretends to be gay in order to keep his career in the world of art, which causes many misunderstandings with his wife, and mother.

Elvis Gratton, dead for three days, comes back to life.