The land beneath our feet: this is what Canadians share. But when that land gives way - when a sinkhole appears smack in the middle of a McGill University football game - then all manner of messy and uncomfortable truths may emerge. An archaeology grad, Baptiste (Samian) seizes on this rare opportunity to dig down into Montreal history, and the history before that…

Writer-director François Girard (famous for brilliant and ambitious work like Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould and The Red Violin) takes us back prior to the point of first contact between European explorers and Iroquois villagers in 1535, tracing several recurring thematic and poetic threads as the modern day archeological dig unearths clues and intimations from across more than 700 years.

Girard describes the movie as "an evocation, a fresco trying to explain how we became who we are." In that sense, this is self consciously a foundational myth, or counter-myth, a film for Canada’s 150 and Montreal 375th birthday that is implicitly designed as an act of reconciliation. But don’t let these aspirations to grandeur put you off: it’s primarily a dynamic emotional piece, a melodrama played out in dramatic vignettes which echo and reverberate across the centuries. This is Canadian cinema at its epic, eccentric best.

"A rich cinematic banquet." Dennis Harvey, Variety

Friday, April 20, 2018 at 6:20 PM
Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 2:00 PM
Monday, April 23, 2018 at 6:20 PM
Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 12:00 PM
Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 8:30 PM