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Video Interview: Pascal Plante – Nadia, Butterfly | Cannes 2020 Label

Receiving that phone call that you’ve been accepted into the Cannes Film Festival surely never gets old but what if your film was selected as part of the asterixed ’20 edition? With no Palme d’Or winner, we’ll look back at the edition that could have been as a reminder of just how fragile our world ecosystem is, but we can just imagine the acknowledgement serves as a major confidence booster for any burgeoning filmmaker. Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante received that call for his sophomore feature film, Nadia, Butterfly and regardless of where this film eventually premieres, it’s that interaction with the first audience that will likely squash the irritation of not being on the Croisette. While still in the midst of a media blitz that included factions of the entertainment and sporting world media outlets, I got the chance to speak with the filmmaker in socially distanced interview (standard picnic table length) and sans having seen the fruit of his labor. We nonetheless got to speak about psychology of the character, the reasons for immersing himself in this world and what it was like to work with Olympic athlete Katerine Savard (she plays the lead), and the likes of Cinematographer Stéphanie Weber-Biron and fellow filmmaker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles.


Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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