We first took note of Quebecois filmmaker Alexandre Dostie with his back to back shorts in the TIFF-premiered short ‘Mutants’ (2016) and the Sundance-showcased ‘I’ll End Up in Jail’ (2019). While awaiting his feature film debut, the hyphenate filmmaker—a poet and now a playwright with a project (Kiki et la colère) launching in early 2026 —has returned to the short format with ‘Boa.’ A radical departure from his last feature yet retaining his signature twisted noir humor, Boa stars Dimitri Doré (Bruno Reidal, Confessions of a Murderer). Dostie ventures to France for a tale that explores a grotesque physical transformation, where a body morphs into something almost non-human. The film charts an identity crisis at a snake’s pace, following a young monk whose spiritual foundations are shattered in a violent collision between the flesh and the spirit. I sat down with the filmmaker to discuss with genesis of the project, how he cast his main actor and the look and soundscape of the film. Look for this on the festival circuit moving into all of 2026.
