Skinny Bottines, directed by Romain F. Dubois, is the only film set in Canada airing at the 79th Cannes festival, which opens Tuesday.Supplied
There is something darkly comical about the fact that the one glimpse of Canada chic moviegoers of the Cannes Film Festival will receive this week features one of our most notorious eyesores: the grimy Burger King that sits on an abused stretch of Montreal’s Sainte-Catherine Street West.
The fast-food joint – which finally closed last month after years of catering to Montreal’s more vomit-prone partiers – is a pivotal location for Romain F. Dubois’ new short film Skinny Bottines (Skinny Boots), one of just a handful of Canadian, or Canadian-ish, productions playing Cannes this year. It’s also the only festival selection actually set inside the country.
Romain F. Dubois.Alex Blouin/Supplied
“Downtown Montreal is hard to capture because it’s not that beautiful, it’s kind of ugly. There are beautiful buildings, but the people there are also a little out of this world, and they’re all crowded together,” says Dubois, a music-video director who is making his short-film debut with this tale of a pickpocket. “It was always a goal to capture that funny kind of space.”
A “funny kind of space” might also be a good way to describe where Canadian cinema fits in this year’s Cannes program. Unlike the banner year of 2024, whose official competition and parallel sidebar programs featured new works from such familiar homegrown names as David Cronenberg (The Shrouds) and Guy Maddin (Rumours), plus a truly global breakout moment for Matthew Rankin with Universal Language, this year’s festival slate is more akin to the 2025 edition, whose Canadian roster included a mix of lesser-known vets and emerging filmmakers. But this year is, well, smaller.
In addition to Dubois’ short, which will play the festival’s Critics’ Week lineup, there is just one other officially Canadian production at Cannes: the Venezuelan-set revenge thriller Death Has No Master from director Jorge Thielen Armand, which is a co-production between Canada, Venezuela, Italy and Luxembourg. While that feature – which premieres in the Directors’ Fortnight slate and stars Asia Argento as a woman struggling to evict the occupants of her father’s cacao plantation – is set in the sweltering rural outskirts of Caracas, its vision originated in chilly Montreal.
“When I was at Concordia, the first years after I left Venezuela, I had this recurring dream where I was in an abandoned building or dark sort of factory – filthy, disorienting, a labyrinth. And when I woke up, I would think of all the people and places I left behind, which is what this film is about: the nightmare of going back and finding that you’re a foreigner in your own place,” says Armand. “Canada has been home for me, and this movie wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing people there.”
A still from Death Has No Master, directed by Jorge Thielen Armand.Supplied
Does a lack of identifiable, quote-unquote “Canadian” cinema at Cannes indicate some kind of industry crisis in this country’s filmmaking community? If so, America is facing a similar existential conundrum, given that only two U.S. productions are playing in the festival’s main competition. Then again, when it comes to the Canadian side of things, it feels more like a simple matter of timing.
“It’s more about the pipeline, what’s ready or not to submit to the festival. It’s just bad luck that not so many films were available in time for Cannes this year. It’s not a science,” says the Montreal-based producer Sylvain Corbeil, whose latest film, the Gessica Généus-directed drama Marie Madeleine, is technically the third Canadian title at this year’s festival, though it is classified by Telefilm as a non-official co-production (meaning that it’s not financed by the federal agency’s Canada Feature Film Fund).
“I know for a fact that next year is going to be much more competitive for Canadian film in the festival,” adds Corbeil, a Cannes veteran thanks to such titles as Universal Language and last year’s quirky romcom Peak Everything. “There will be many more films ready for TIFF this fall, too.”
Marie Madeleine, directed by the Haitian filmmaker Gessica Généus, was produced by a Canadian, Sylvain Corbeil.Supplied
It is also not as if Canadian talent will have a diminished presence on the French Riviera this week and next – frankly, they’ll be hard to ignore, even if their projects are internationally flavoured.
Vancouver’s Taylor Russell is co-starring in the highly anticipated sci-fi thriller Hope from South Korea’s Na Hong-jin. Quebec superstar Théodore Pellerin is a member of the jury for the Critics’ Week program. Quebec filmmaker Monia Chokri, who is beloved in France for her off-kilter work, is serving as the chair of the Caméra d’Or jury. And Vancouver animator Leah Nelson is premiering her feature directorial debut Tangles, an adaptation of Canadian cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s memoir, which was largely created at Nelson’s company Giant Ant in B.C. but financed by U.S. outfits including Point Grey Pictures, the production company run by Canadians Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
Leah Nelson.Supplied
“I guess the question is whether we’re trying to figure out what a Canadian film is at all, and I’m very interested in the answer because I’m not sure what a ‘Canadian film’ means today. I know what it means to be a Canadian human being, but the final product? I don’t know the answer,” says Nelson, who names animator Domee Shi as an inspiration, given that Shi’s 2022 hit Turning Red depicted Toronto in a bold new light for a global audience, even if it was funded by the Hollywood-based Disney.
“I was thinking about how proud I am that it’s a film about Canada and with wonderful Toronto visuals,” adds Nelson, “but I don’t think that’s why it’s an amazing film. It’s an amazing film because Domee did a fantastic job directing it.”
Meanwhile, away from Cannes’ big screens, the festival’s many beachfront pavilions and cafés will be bustling with representatives from the 200-plus Canadian companies that will be on the ground this week conducting crucial business at the Marché du Film, the industry-facing portion of the festival where movies are financed, bought and sold.
“We’re talking a lot about red carpets and stars, but at the end of the day, the big business is the market. There’s a lot happening there and we have a responsibility to show to Canadians that there is a lot of essential work going on behind the scenes,” says Julie Roy, executive director and chief executive of Telefilm. “To be on the ground is incredibly important for filmmakers, for producers, for distributors and for us as funding agencies.”
No matter if their work is being shown or shopped, the sheer thrill of meeting the global industry head-on is hard to shake for Canadian filmmakers.
“It’s been a very weird month, I’m still not sure how to think about it,” says Skinny Bottines director Dubois. “I’ve been getting invites, all these producers asking me if I want to meet. I have ideas to do co-productions. All these doors are opening for me suddenly. I’m also a huge fan of Asian cinema, so with new films here from Hirokazu Koreeda, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, it’s just: wow. It’s hard to believe.”