EARLY WINTER - PREMIÈRES NEIGES

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL ROWE

2015 / AUSTRALIA, QUÉBEC/CANADA | 96 minutes

Original version in English, Subtitled in French

DIRECTOR: Michael Rowe

SCREENPLAY: Michael Rowe

CAST: Suzanne  Clément, Paul Doucet, Micheline Lanctôt, Lise Martin

                

This film was the winner of the Jury Prize Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori), following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September 2015. The film was also screened in North American premiere at the 44th Festival of New Cinema in Montreal in October 2015 as well as at the festivals of Rouyn-Noranda, Melbourne, Brisbane, Halifax and Kerala. The film was released in France on January 6 and it will screen in Australia in March. It will be screened in Montreal starting January 29, 2015.

David, in his fourties, is leading a routine life with his wife Maya and their two children. To fill his wife of the latest gadgets, he works alone day and night as a janitor in a nursing home. But then he begins to suspect that Maya  is unfaithful, his whole life that is put to test, the past threatens to overtake the present.

Film's Official Synopsis

"David, 45, lives in Montreal with his wife, Maya, a housewife of Russian extraction who only speaks English, and their two young sons. Working the night shift in a nursing home, David copes as best he can with his miserable life by scouring thrift shops in search of things to repair, and by taking antidepressants. His past haunts him, and invades the present brutally when he learns that Maya is planning to attend a design fair where she will surely see Alexander, her lover from six years ago. With this final instalment in his painful trilogy about solitude, preceded by Leap Year (Camera d’or and Louve d’or, 2010) and The Well, Mexican filmmaker Michael Rowe has made a family drama (co-produced in Canada) of impressive rigour, using minimalist, patient and empathetic sequence shots to observe the slow disintegration of a couple folded in on itself, under bright yet gloomy and often stifling lighting designed by Nicolas Canniccioni. Suzanne Clément plays Maya with strikingly icy charisma, while Paul Doucet impresses with his portrayal of a once rock-solid man cracking up before our eyes."

 Film Trailer

Fatima - film

FATIMA

  

     Directior :  Philippe Faucon

     Actors : Zita Hanrot, Soria Zeroual, Kenza Noah Aïche

     Genre : Drame

     Script : Philippe Faucon

     Music : Robert-Marcel Lepage

     Country : France, Canada

     Released : 2015

     Duration: 89 min.

     Language : Arabic, French

    Festival : Festival de Cannes 2015

The film version I watched had no English subtitles.

This film is based on the writings by Fatima Elayoubi: Prière à la lune and Enfin, je peux marcher seule. The themes in those two works are loosely adopted for the film.
  

The film is about difficulty of the immigration, about the place allotted to the female immigrants from North Africa who are not well educated and who do not speak French even after a considerable time living in France, and the difficulty of raising children alone in a new culture in which the children are very quickly immersed.

Fatima lives on her own with two daughters whom she has to support, the 15 year old Souad, a teenager in revolt, and 18 year old Nesrine, who is starting a medical school. Fatima speaks French poorly and is constantly preoccupied with raising her daughters and the frustration by the daily interactions with them. They are her pride and joy, but they are also a constant source of worry. To ensure the best possible future for them, she works long hours as a cleaning woman. One day, she takes a fall on the stairs. On leave, Fatima begins to write to her daughters in Arabic what she has never been able to express to them in French.

The film is basically about the strength of Fatima's character and the difficulty of integrating into a new society.

FILM'S TRAILER