Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #150. Matthias & Maxime – Xavier Dolan

Matthias & Maxime

And we begin our count up with Quebecois director Xavier Dolan, who after working on his largest budget to date in 2017/18 quickly returned to his low budget roots for his eighth feature Matthias & Maxime, produced by Dolan and his regular collaborator Nancy Grant for the Sons of Manual label.  Cinematographer Andre Turpin (who has been working with Dolan since 2013’s Tom at the Farm) is on hand, as is actress Anne Dorval, who has been involved in most of the director’s productions since her excellent turn in his 2009 debut I Killed My Mother. Starring alongside Dolan and Dorval are Antoine-Olivier Pilon (Mommy), Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Pier-Luc Funk (from Philippe Lesage’s Les Démons), Samuel Gauthier, Adib Alkhalidey, Catherine Brunet, and Marilyn Castonguay. The odd man out in terms of casting, belongs to English actor Harris Dickinson of Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats fame. Despite the disastrous TIFF reception of his long-gestating English language debut The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018), Dolan’s next promises to be of a more personal sort, reminiscent of his early titles. A decade into his filmmaking career that began at the 2009 showing the Directors’ Fortnight debut I Killed My Mother, he returned a year later with Heartbeats in 2010, this time in the Un Certain Regard section — which is where 2012’s Laurence Anyways would shore up. He broke into the Cannes main competition with 2014’s Mommy¸winning the Jury Prize, and then won the Grand Prize of the Jury for 2016’s It’s Only the End of the World (also taking home the Ecumenical Prize of the Jury). 2013’s Tom at the Farm competed in Venice.

Gist: While exact details of the plot have yet to be revealed, Matthias & Maxime is purportedly an intimate Quebec-set drama meant to be exploration of friends in their 20s while touching more explicitly on what it is to be gay.

Release Date/Prediction: Currently in post-production, a third time in the Cannes competition with Matthias & Maxime could be possible for Dolan. However, the nature and scope of the project suggests he could also return to Venice for the second time.