Les Films de L'Autre

Co-directors Hubert Caron-Guay and Serge-Olivier Rondeau follow migrant workers through the steps in the hiring process of a community-based employment assistance organization. The filmmakers highlight the migrants’ difficult path by capturing conversations between the future employees and the recruiters. Through images shot on a body camera and a minimalist observational approach, the film exposes harsh and poignant realities. It draws parallels between the changing of the seasons and the cycle of the cattle industry that begins with animals being raised and cared for at a ranch and ends with them being sent to the abattoir grimly looming in the background. Ressources is a sobering and thought-provoking work that gives a voice to those who are at the heart of the food system that sustains this country.

While Montreal is in the throes of a string of kidnappings targeting young boys, ten-year-old Felix is finishing his school year in the seemingly quiet suburb where he lives. A sensitive boy with a vivid imagination, Felix is afraid of everything. Little by little, his imaginary demons begin to mirror those of the truly disturbing world around him.

A real estate agent from Paris arrives in Los Angeles to settle his late mother's estate, but a found photograph sends him on an impromptu journey to Mexico to find a woman named Lola.

Carried by an immersive sound environment that plunges us in the reality and the perceptions of these resilient and inspiring people, this film questions our own blindness face to violence and suffering of our time — despite the overabundance of images that reach us — and highlights the urgency of lending an ear to hear these stories.

In Saigon, family culture carries on as it has for centuries, even when blood ties are broken. Through a mosaic of intimate portraits, Má Sài Gòn explores humanity’s universal desire for love, acceptance, connection and belonging through an LGBTQ+ lens. The film is a love letter – a bittersweet ode to a comforting yet disturbing mother, to a city that is as liberating as it is oppressive.

In a province not so distant from ours, now controlled by a far-right government, the borders are closed and immigrants, now under threat, are desperate to get out. A Haitian woman hands over her young son to a thirty-something Quebec man before fleeing. With help from a Vietnamese former refugee, they try to solve the mystery.

Worlds and genres collide one summer afternoon as a young woman and her horse make a surprising and eventful odyssey in this richly cinematic drama by Montreal's Halima Elkhatab

In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.

How Montreal is transformed from winter to spring. Inspired by Berlin: Symphony of a great city, Printemps Now! is a cinematographic poem, an audiovisual symphony of the city of Montreal transitioning from winter to spring.

When Vlace is suspended for hitting a classmate, Sasha is called to come get his son at school and has no choice but to take him along on his delivery route. During this intimate journey, we discover what provoked Vlace's uncharacteristic act, as father and son find their way toward a new understanding.

In the heart of Kamouraska in Quebec, Patrice Fortier lives at “La société des plantes” (The Society of Plants). There, like a transcriber of the middle ages, he diligently cares for the rare and forgotten plant seeds to create a variety of so-called “old futures.” Patrice dreams up his garden and turns his crops into art projects. Over time, and with patience, he passes on his passion and his knowledge to us through his seed bank. These seeds of life will appear in thousands of gardens throughout the world. An ode to plant biodiversity and to our heritage, brought forth by a true and genetically motivated sower.

To fill the absence of his six-year-old daughter living in Berlin, a Montreal filmmaker keeps a film diary which takes him back to his relationship with his adoptive father and his biological father, whom he never knew. His diary also becomes a reflection on cinema by revisiting the work of filmmakers who influenced him such as Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders. Diary of a Father is a poetic response to making the separation between a father and his child bearable.

This documentary is a road-mind movie that immerses us in the fascinating world of photographer-writer Serge Emmanuel Jongué.

In Montreal, front-line workers work hard to provide appropriate care to the most vulnerable citizens in our society.

In a Guadeloupean village, a young boy adopts a stray dog. Devastated by his new companion’s sudden disappearance, he sets out on a quest through this unknown island.

The night is falling and Montreal is under the snow. People line up at the lost and found office of the city’s transit company. They all have lost something, which, upon reflection, becomes the symbol of a deeper loss. Prayer for a Lost Mitten is a creative documentary by turns melancholic and festive, yet ever compassionate. A film that helps us get through the winter.

A peaceful life on a family farm. A cold, clear winter day. Nine-year-old Noémy is about to leave the carefree world of childhood behind.

Within the confines of a housing project in one of Montreal’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, Monique, Ginette, Yimga, Élisabeth, José, René (and many others) are waging a battle in which every gesture counts. Together, through daily efforts, residents and social workers pit social vitality and citizen engagement against the dangers of a fragile, hand-to-mouth existence. Structured like a fresco inside the housing project, far from the clichés and preconceptions about so-called tough neighbourhoods, The Undaunted is a journey into the heart of a unique community.

Filmmaker Claude Demers tells the story of his search for his biological mother and their eventual meeting. He does this in voice-over, accompanied by images from Canada's national archives. The painstakingly selected and fluidly edited black-and-white clips build up, like the perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle; an impression of his mother as he had imagined her. How she grew up, worked, loved and left him.

An adolescent girl’s figure skating lesson becomes the latest battleground in the marital warfare between her parents in Halima Ouardiri’s piercing family drama.