40th FNC: Shame, Snowtown, Faust, A Separation and Guilty of Romance Among Festival Selections

Breaking out around the time where NYFF is on its last legs, Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma (October 12 to 23) kicks in with about four times the size in volume, and obviously more of an eclectic range. This year is the festival’s big 40 – and for the occasion they’ve commissioned some of the names who’ve been a part of the festival to each contribute a short film in the context of what is being called the “Cartes Blanches” series. Denis Côté, Deco Dawson, Sophie Deraspe, Rodrigue Jean, Zacharias Kunuk, Marie Losier, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Théodore Ushev and Denis Villeneuve will each submit a four minute short. For their opening and closing festival items they’ve got the distinction of showing off Foreign Film Oscar selected items in Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar and selected as the opener well before it was announced as France’s submission for Oscar is Declaration of War by Valérie Donzelli. Both Blake and I managed to miss Donzelli’s film while it showed during Critics’ Week in Cannes.

At today’s press conference head programmer Claude Chamberlan read off tons of items mostly coming to us from this year’s Cannes, but going as far back as last year’s TIFF. Among the best in the Louve d’Or category we have some of this year’s personal favorites in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena, Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st, Steve McQueen’s Shame (see pic above) and Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait among the mix while the Special Presentations category we’ve got Nuri Bilge Ceylan ‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, Alexander Sokurov’s (Venice winning) Faust with Wim Wenders showing up for Pina and Asghar Farhadi being celebrated for A Separation and a retrospective of his work (he is the current favorite for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars as we speak).

From the young programming team it is Julien Fonfrède who supplies the fest with some much needed kick with his Temps Ø sidebar with multiple guest appearances from Marie Losier (The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye), Romain Gavras with the year-old (Our Day Will Come), porn actress Megumi Kagurazaka (Sion Sono’s Guilty of Romance) and fresh from Venice/TIFF we might see Shinya Tsukamoto show up with Kotoko. For a complete list of all the selected films, Short Films, P’tits Loups, Tributes, Retrospectives and Events, as well as FNC Lab and FNC Pro head over to the official site.

Opening and Closing:
La Guerre est déclarée – Valérie Donzelli
Monsieur Lazhar – Philippe Falardeau

Louve d’Or:
Behold the Lamb, John Mcllduff
Black Blood, Miaoyan Zhang
Blue Bird, Gust Van Den Berghe
Elena, Andrey Zvyagintsev
Les Géants, Bouli Lanners
The Island, Kamen Kalev
The Last Christeros, Matias Meyer
Nuit #1, Anne Émond
Ok, Enough Goodbye, Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia
Oslo, August 31st, Joachim Trier
Shame, Steve McQueen
Toll Booth, Tolga Karacelik
Tomboy, Céline Sciamma
Twilight Portrait, Angelina Nikonova
Volcano, Runar Runarsson
Wasted Youth, Argyris Papadimitropoulos
White White World, Oleg Novkovic
Without, Mark Jackson

Special Presentation:
30 tableaux, by Paule Baillargeon
Les Amants, by Nicolas Klotz & Elisabeth Perceval
An Organisation of Dreams – Part 2 – Dangerous People, by Ken McMullen
L’Apollonide Souvenirs de la maison close – Bertrand Bonello
De la guerre – Bertrand Bonello
Stopped on Track – Andrea Dresen
Norwegian Wood – Tran Anh Hung
Early One Morning – Jean-Marc Moutout
Décharge – Benoît Pilon
Faust – Alexander Sokurov
Almayer’s Folly – Chantal Akerman
U2-From the Sky Down – Davis Guggenheim
Hanezu – Naomi Kawaze
Hard Core Logo II – Bruce McDonald
Outside Satan – Bruno Dumont
Il se peut que la beauté ait renforcé notre résolution – Masao Adachi, Philippe Grandieux
Louis Martin, journaliste – Louis Bélanger
Melancholia – Lars Von Trier
My Paris Movie – Jonas Mekas
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
The Skin I Live In – Pedro Almodóvar
Pina – Wim Wenders
Take This Waltz – Sarah Polley
The Turin Horse – Béla Tarr
A Separation – Asghar Farhadi

International Panorama:
Abderrahmane Sissako: Une fenêtre sur le monde – Charles Castella
Absolutely Tame Is a Horse (Asb Heyvan-e Najibist), by Abdolreza Kahani
Acorazado – Alvaro Curiel de Icaza
Avé – Konstantin Bojanov
Chico & Rita – Javier Mariscal & Fernando Trueba
Cultures of Resistance – Iara Lee
Do Me Love – Jacky Katu & Lou Viger
End of the Night – Daisuke Miyazaki
Flying Home – Tobias Wyss
Pio’s Generation – Juan Rodrigo & Pedro Rodrigo
Goodnight Nobody – Jacqueline Zünd
The Furious Force of Rhymes – Joshua Atesh Litle
Land of Oblivion – Michale Boganim
Last Road to the Beach – Fabiano De Souza
Melting Away – Doron Eran
Mike – Lars Blumers
Mondo Lux – The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter – Elfi Mikesch
Our Ancestors The Gauls – Christian Zerbib
Policeman – Nadav Lapid
The First Rasta – Hélène Lee
Searching for Hassan – Edouard Beau
The Terrorists – Thunska Pansittivorakul
Three and a Half – Naghi Nemati
A Life for Ballet – Marlène Ionesco
The Life and Death of Celso Junior – Panayotis Evangelidis
Vinyl (Tales from the Vienna Underground) – Andrew C. Standen-Razlrish
Y’a pire ailleurs – Jean-Henri Meunier

Focus:
Surviving Progress – Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks
Amy George – Yonah Lewis & Calvin Thomas
The Girl in the White Coat – Darrell Wasyk
Fortunate Son – Tony Asimakopoulos
I am a good person/I am a bad person – Ingrid Veninger
Laurentie – Simon Lavoie & Mathieu Denis
Marginal Road – Yassaman Ameri
Peace Park – David Bouthillier
Romeo Eleven – Ivan Grbovic

Focus (Non-Competing Docus) :
Alejandro Jodorowsky, grand rectum de l’Université de Foulosophie – François Gourd & Matthieu Bouchard
Another Silence – Santiago Amigorena
National Parks Project, by Louise Archambault, Keith Behrman, Daniel Cockburn, Hubert Davis, Sturla Gunnarsson, Zacharias Kunuk, Stéphane Lafleur, Peter Lynch, Catherine Martin, Kevin McMahon, Scott Smith, Jamie Travis and John Walker
Le Pays des âmes – Olivier Godin
Planet Yoga – Carlos Ferrand
Dust. A Sculptor’s Journey – Jeanne Pope
Rasta, A Soul’s Journey – Donisha Prendergast
République: un abécédaire populaire – Hugo Latulippe
Les Tickets: l’arme de la répression – Eric “Roach” Denis
Touch the Sky – Adrian Wills

Temps Ø:
Guilty of Romance – Sion Sono
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai – Takahi Miike
Kotoko – Shinya Tsukamoto
Our Day Will Come – Romain Gavras
Sleeping Beauty – Julia Leigh
Snowtown – Justin Kruzel
The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye – Marie Losier
Take Shelter – Jeff Nichols
Last Fast Ride: The Love, Life and Death of a Punk Goddess – Lilly Ayer
Gandu – Quashiq Mukherjee
Shirome – Koji Shiraishi
Saturday Killer – Yuthlert Sippapak
Tatsumi – Eric Khoo
Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy – Christopher Sun Lap Key