René Roberge

Filmes

Bloom
Editor
Three groups of adolescent girl friends from Quebec are going through tough changes. The process of inventing their own bodies and identity are being recorded on the move by their smartphones and shared with their peers from other parts of the networked world. Due to their strong need of external confirmation, they alter their lives into a series of retouched pictures and videos. The film camera, however, captures their feelings of void, loneliness and deep inner insecurities that are not so attractive for Periscope, TikTok or Instagram. An intimate portrait of adolescence is made with full comprehension of experiencing and self-presentation in a generation growing up on the brink of the real and virtual worlds.
A Night Song
Editor
A patient camera glides over the everyday objects: still lives on the wall, flowers in the vase, a swaying drop light. The sun enters the cosy home where Noëlla sits smoking at her laptop, playing Solitaire. The situation is hopeless. She’s going to lose against the computer once again. All the while her son-in-law, Pierre, is organising everything she needs, pragmatic and friendly: breakfast, the (last) doctor’s visit – and then the transfer.
White Noise
Editor
A reflection on the fate of humanity in the Anthropocene epoch, White Noise is a roller-coaster of a film, a whirlwind of sounds and images. The fourth feature-length work by Simon Beaulieu, this film essay plunges viewers into a subjective sensory adventure—a direct physical encounter with the information overload of daily life. White Noise transforms the imminent collapse of our civilization into a visceral aesthetic experience.
Daughter of the Crater
Editor
A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.
Pauline Julien, intime et politique
Editor
A documentary on Pauline Julien, singer and political activist.
La maison des Syriens
Editor
Nallua
Editor
The Pond Inlet Inuit in Nunavut live with the memory of a tragedy: in 1943, 25 people –over half the population of the community – died within the span of a few days. This personal and intimate documentary brings us into homes and lives of Ruth and Elisapie, two survivors of this tragedy.
Self(less) Portrait
Editor
In an age of social media, where the boundaries between private and public are constantly being redrawn, 50 people come together to reveal some of their most intimate thoughts. Director Danic Champoux (Mom and Me) returns to Hot Docs to bring us this inventive story that bends the boundaries of documentary cinema. The ensemble cast appears to bare all for the camera, openly discussing a multitude of subjects, from the funny to the heartbreaking, in this unique portrait that celebrates the diversity of human existence.
Miron : Un homme revenu d'en dehors du monde
Editor
Home of the Buffalo
Editor
Constructed from Canadian prairie archival images taken between 1920 and 1940, this film lyrically explores a transgender son's relationship with his father and the family's relationship to their land.
Un fleuve humain
Editor
La main invisible
Editor
Le temps qu'il fait
Editor
Nestor, Lei, Pierrette, Mohamed, Hafida, Marius, Marc, Galina, Genady, Mike and Lala: through their presence, Le temps qu’il fait weaves a mosaic of stories in which dreams and disappointments, hopes and worries intertwine with the life that is before them. In counterpoint, there are these new landscapes of financial centers, abandoned industrial spaces and wasteland from which we hear the echo of speeches that call to take the train of the new economy. By their simple attachment to a profession which gives them a living, the men and women of the film put up resistance to these slogans. Little by little, a radical rupture is emerging between economic thought and the movement of life. A break that shapes the present time.
Shadows of Spring
Editor
Emerging from the multiple perspectives of this film, a memory of a neighbourhood is recreated which tells of the fragility of working class habitats residents and workers from southwest Montréal recount its tragic history: The immigration and settling of the Irish in the 19th century the expropriation of Griffintown the destruction of Goose village. The industrial decline of Pointe-Saint-Charles and surroundings.
Voix off
Mixing Engineer
Two worlds are involved. The internal world, closed, virtually isolated, with just one tenuous, uncertain link with the other world - the telephone. The other, external world exists only to pass from one sealed-off place to another. Call each other? - you lose your voice before you get an answer: your head spins with non-existent voices. Telephone and answering machines are scheming devices. Just waiting in vain.
Gathering Place
Editor
Four Inuit families build a qaggiq, a large communal igloo, to mark the approach of spring with singing and games. A young man woos a girl but her parents are in disagreement over whether he shall get to marry her.