Next Floor

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, 2008, 11 min
Section: Tribute to Denis Villeneuve

Synopsis

A heterogeneous company is feasting at a big table. The waiters can hardly bring new dishes fast enough, while two musicians are doing their best to entertain them. Suddenly the head waiter announces "next floor” and the whole table, including the banqueters, falls one floor down: the feast resumes, the guests are merely a bit gray and dusty. The movie, which can be taken as a gloomy grotesque, a Dantean allegory, or a parable of the gradual and inevitable collapse of consumer society, may recall the films of Jan Švankmajer, Roy Andersson, and Guy Maddin but it betrays its own, completely original poetics. The film won awards at fifty film festivals, including Cannes, and received the prestigious Jutra Award, as well as a Genie.