Archive of films Demons / Les démons
Canada
2015, 118 min
Section:
Variety Critics' Choice
Year: 2016
Ten-year-old Felix is growing up in a peaceful environment and you might say his childhood is ideal. The movie looks at events through his eyes, thereby revealing little by little how much fear and anxiety even a so-called normal child experiences at every turn. Thanks to his heightened sensitivity, the boy seems to feel when actual danger is lurking nearby.
Synopsis
Fevered imagination and nightmarish reality brush shoulders to disconcerting effect in Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage’s extraordinary examination of childhood fears festering in broad suburban daylight. Putting his documentary training to disciplined use as he teases out the largely internalized insecurities – sexual, social and practical – of his 10-year-old protagonist, Lesage initially balances good-humored humanism with a formal sangfroid suggestive of a summer-brightened Haneke. A provocative shift in perspective at the midway point, however, calls the irrationality of those young neuroses into question: As word spreads through the community of a series of child kidnappings, the boy’s fears are concentrated on a threat that cannot easily be explained away, left ambiguous until, an hour into the film, Lesage abruptly breaks away from his experience to trace the adjacent arc of an insidious (but likewise insecure) authority.
Guy Lodge
About the director
Philippe Lesage (b. 1973, Saint Agip, Quebec), a distinctive Canadian documentarist, graduated from McGill University in Montréal and from Denmark’s European Film College, where he later taught. He directed four feature-length documentaries that received a variety of foreign and domestic prizes, including a Jutra Award for best Québécoise documentary of the year (The Heart That Beats / Ce cœur qui bat, 2010). He debuted in docs with Can We Live Together? (Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble?, 2006), followed by How Can You Tell If Little Fish Are Happy? (Comment savoir si les petits poissons sont heureux?, 2009), and Laylou (2012). He turned to narrative film with the psychological drama The Demons, screened in competition at the San Sebastián IFF and honored at the festivals in Toronto, San Francisco, Budapest, and elsewhere, and Copenhague A Love Story which will be released in 2016.
Contacts
Be For Films
Avenue des Villas, 28 boite 0A, 1060, Brussel
Belgium
Tel: +32 489 802 123, +33 614 343 755
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.beforfilms.com
About the film
Color, DCP
Section: | Variety Critics' Choice |
---|---|
Director: | Philippe Lesage |
Screenplay: | Philippe Lesage |
Dir. of Photography: | Nicolas Canniccioni |
Editor: | Mathieu Bouchard-Malo |
Art Director: | Marjorie Rhéaume |
Producer: | Galilé Marion-Gauvin |
Production: | L'unité centrale |
Coproduction: | Les films de l’autre |
Cast: | Edouard Tremblay-Grenier, Pier-Luc Funk, Yannick Gobeil-Dugas, Vassili Schneider |
Sales: | Be For Films |
Guests
Pamela Leu
Sales Agent
Philippe Lesage
Film Director