Polytechnique Goes to Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight

He’ll be following last year’s world premiere of his award-winning short film Next Floor, with a showing of his latest feature film in the prestigious la Quinzaine des réalisateurs/a.k.a Cannes’ sidebar Director’s Fortnight. According to Le Devoir who cite “European sources” and not the film’s producers, Denis Villeneuve will be returning to the Croisette (a section that is already familiar to him) with the sobering, expertly detailed and handled Polytechnique, a portrait based on the events of the Montreal University massacre where a gunman executed over a dozen female students. Filmed in black and white, with separate language tracks, this is a portrait where the filmmaker’s aim is not about making sense of the gunman’s actions, but rather explores the process of healing. Polytechnique was released in Quebec to glowing reviews, but the distributor unfortunately mishandled the release of the film in English Canada, not thinking of a TIFF launch pad or film festival cred like Cannes before a dismal release.