The Forties

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

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.

Over the course of several years beginning in the 1950s, a man and his oddball family run hotels in New England and Vienna, as unexpected events change their lives forever.

In the mid-18th Century, as England and France battle over control of Canada, an epic romance between a peasant woman and a trapper unfurls

In the German-occupied Paris, Helene is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her affection.

Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.

When Madeleine is diagnosed with Alzheimers, she makes two important decisions. One is to keep it from her family. The other is to revisit her beloved Gaspésie and relive, for one last time, the memories this evokes. Encountering Zoë, an emotionally disturbed young musician, Madeleine asks her to be her driver for the trip.

The story of Catherine, who, after her violent husband puts her life in serious danger one night, decides to run away with her son and start a new life under a fresh identity.

A war vet finds out that a former prostitute had his baby. Doubting it's his, he gives it away, so she reports him. Twenty years later, she still wants to find her son. She meets a young man and falls in love, but the vet's prison term ends.

Roland des Roncesvalles is a legendary knight from the age of chivalry in France. In the 11th-century epic La Chanson de Roland, he is depicted as a key figure in halting the advance of the Arabs into France. In this story, the 10th-century legend is staged by a group of 12th-century pilgrims using the 11th-century poem. Their acting is interrupted by a violent peasant uprising, which kills many of the pilgrims. However, one of the survivors, is converted to the peasant cause and later speaks out in favor of more just treatment for the downtrodden.

A lonely woman spends the winter isolated and reminiscing about the past as she waits for her husband to return from a prolonged absence.

Two bored Montreal housewives (Monique Mercure & Louise Turcot), with inattentive husbands (Marcel Sabourin & Donald Pilon), and lots of time on their hands, amuse themselves by paying the local tradesmen something extra to give them amorous attention. Their entertainment leads to frantic confusion, however, when one of the visiting gentlemen - shall we say - 'expires'. The housewives deal with their unpleasant situation quite energetically.

Françoise has gone into business seducing men whose wives want to divorce them, and who need incriminating evidence against them. In addition, she has a little blackmail operation going on on the side with politicians who can't afford a scandal. She got started on this business after she was raped, and hasn't looked back since. Now the police are on her trail, and she avails herself of the services of a couple who make a profession of hiding wanted criminals. At the hideout, she meets Simon, a second-generation mobster. As the police close in, Françoise and Simon go on the run together, pulling off occasional heists for operating money. Before long, they have also fallen in love.

A first-rate French-Canadian spy must tangle with a female Chinese spy who is in love with him.

Each married on their side, a teacher and a sociologist meet by chance in Quebec. Political and intellectual discussions followed a brief mad love.

A drama of manners, spiced by light moments, describing the "love stories" of a mother and her daughter. The two women spend a summer together. Madeline, the mother, a professional, independent woman, begins a romantic relationship with an engineer after ending a previous relation. For her part, Renée, her 20-year old daughter, tries to see her father again and dreams of stable love.

In a little French town everything goes on as usual and people seem friendly and good-natured, until the day two women arrive from Paris. A man gets off the same bus, and that very night he seizes the two women and asks for the most beautiful woman in town as their ransom. After the initial shock, the mayor, his brother, the prefect, the police, and the gendarmerie gather around the house where the two woman are imprisoned. It will be a test for everyone and each of them will show his/her real stuff: hypocrisy, meanness, or humanity concealed under their provincial respectability.

Two women and a transvestite gay man cross paths in this French Canadian drama. The transvestite is preparing for a drag-queen beauty pageant, and has decided to present himself as Cleopatra. Of the two women, one was just fired from her waitressing job and seeks to go back to work at the nightclub where the beauty pageant is to be held. The other woman's mother has just won one million food stamps.

A doctor living in a small mining town discovers that his dissatisfied young wife is having an affair with a truck driver.

A TV film staging of Michel Tremblay's play "Sainte Carmen de la Main" by André Brassard.

A University teacher finds three bright students and decides to teach them how to count cards to make lots of money. As they learn how to play the casinos, things get tricky when the debt owing teacher informs them that their front man wants restitution for loses in about a weeks time. The three students decide to hit all the major casinos in Ontario and Quebec until discovered.

Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss their differing attitudes and desires but come to no resolution.

A young American hockey player, studying in Canada on a hockey scholarship, falls in love while risking his scholarship and the prospect of the Vietnam war draft.

An out-of-work Irish immigrant in Montreal remains hopeful that his luck is about to change but his disillusioned family grow tired of his constant lying, pigheadedness and instability.

At the turn of the century, Rose-Aimée, the hard working wife of photographer J.A. Martin, decides to leave her children with an aunt to go with him on his annual tour of the Québec countryside. She hopes the intimacy will rekindle their marriage.

A television host tries to react to the process of alienation that the public is subjected to from variety shows.

A bittersweet tale about a small group of men and women whose forest adventures trigger memories of childhood and past loves. A harsh fantasy, wherein it is hard to tell whether the characters are living in their dreams, or dreaming away their lives.

Marcel and Joseph are tireless walkers. Their itinerary is an invitation to discover improbable places and fascinating people. Everlastingly looking for Stanley, Marcel’s only friend, they meet an unlikely crowd of extravagant characters. Each has a story to tell, his hope to share.

A film about the history and fate of the Metis rebel leader who opposed the Canadian government in two seperate rebellions.

It’s 1922 in the Quebec countryside, and Claudine Perreault has big plans for her son, François. He’ll enter the priesthood so that God will forgive her for bearing a child out of wedlock. But 17-year-old François is dead set against joining the seminary. Enraged, Claudine strikes him so violently he goes deaf. After his mother’s death, François begins a different kind of relationship with a woman when he buys the wild and aloof young Amica from an Innu peddler.

Solitary anarchist, Lucien Brouillard ceaselessly fights for his rights and those of his societal peers. His subversive whistleblower activities will bring him endless troubles, and he will begin a real descent into Hell after his former childhood friend, and now judge, Jacque Martineau.

A researcher for the CIA who convinces his superiors to send him to the eastern bloc in order to avenge the murder of his wife by enemy agents discovers a web of deception underneath his wife's death.

In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus—a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.

The film is a series of interviews with various well-known film actresses, including Jenny Agutter, Maria Schneider, and Jane Fonda. The title, which is borrowed from a 1958 film with the same name by Marc Allegret, refers to the sense the actresses have of what is expected of them by the film industry.

During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called Quintet. For one small group, this obsession is not enough. They play the game with living pieces, and only the winner survives.

A young snack-bar waitress is propelled to supermodel status after meeting a photographer for a French fashion magazine.