Festival:
The 24th RIDM
Dates:
November 10-25
About:
More than 60 new and recent documentary features screen in-person and online in Montreal’s sole nonfiction-focused festival, organized this year in eight distinct thematic strands.
Among the offerings:
The Human Space:
ALONE
Director: Paul Tom
The experiences of three refugee children explore the complex issues around people in exile and their reception in host countries.
JE ME SOUVIENS D’UN TEMPS OÙ PERSONNE NE JOGGAIT DANS CE QUARTIER
Director: Jenny Cartwright
The relentless onset of gentrification threatens the social fabric of a neighborhood.
LE KIOSQUE
Director: Alexandra Pianelli
From behind the counter of a newspaper kiosk, the filmmaker uses her cellphone camera to capture a tiny space that encapsulate the life of a Paris neighborhood.
In Search of Oneself:
FIASCO
Director: Nicolas Khoury
The filmmaker turns the camera on himself to challenge the social boundaries set by his family and the Lebanese society in which he lives.
KEVIN
Director: Joana Oliveira
A sensitive hybrid film shining a light on a beautiful friendship between two women separated by an ocean and different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
ORPHEUS
Director: Vadim Kostrov
A minimalist docufiction offering a portrait of contemporary Russia through the perspective of its independent-minded, artistically-oriented young generation.
THEY SLEEP STANDING
Director: Bogdan Stoica
A hybrid film following three friends at different crossroads in life, set in Romania’s dreamlike landscapes.
Family Topographies:
DEAR AUDREY
Director: Jeremiah Hayes
A candid exploration of the incredible life of Martin Duckworth as he accompanies his wife through the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
DROPSTONES
Director: Caitlin Durlak
A woman takes back control of her life after an abusive marriage as she returns with her two children to the picturesque Fogo Island, off the coast of Newfoundland.
UPSTAIRS
Director: Pier-Luc Latulippe, Martin Fournier
A portrait of one of Quebec’s best-loved actors, who has lived for over a decade with extreme depression, as his wife and their neighbors try to bring him back to the land of the living.
Strength of the Living:
ANIMAL MACULA
Director: Sylvain L’Espérance
Based on a huge archaeological investigation into the archives of world cinema, a consideration of the troubled and often violent relationship between humans and animals.
Far Beyond the Pasturelands
Director: Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis, Maude Plante-Husaruk
A journey into the Himalayas, where an expedition to find a rare mushroom is underway.
THE HILL
Director: Julien Chauzit
A hybrid film that captures youthful anxieties over environmental destruction and the need to act now to avert catastrophe.
WHITE ON WHITE
Director: Viera Čakányová
At a Polish station in Antarctica, the filmmaker enters into conversation with an artificial neural network, impelling her into deep and thoughtful introspection about the future of the planet.
Dialogue Between the Arts:
ALEPH
Director: Iva Radivojević
In this labyrinthine work loosely inspired by the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, a many-tentacled story unfolds somewhere between magic realism and documentary, never losing its integrity.
THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN
Director: Ben Russell
A clever reappropriation of Réné Daumal’s novel MOUNT ANALOGUE into an enchanting journey that renders the invisible tangible.
STRAY DUCKS
Director: Bruno Chouinard
This surreal film follows the epic story of 90 rubber ducks, dropped into Greenland’s glaciers as part of an experiment on climate change, which have now made their way all over the world.
Haunted Territories:
BY THE THROAT
Director: Effi & Amir
A surprising work that explores accent as a powerful social marker and the sinister control tactics that exploit it
EL CIELO ESTÁ ROJO
Director: Francina Carbonell
Haunted by nightmares of the victims of a 2010 fire that killed 81 people in a Chilean prison, this revisitation of the tragedy denounces a precarious penal system.
Gestures of Resistance:
DEAR JACKIE
Director: Henri Pardo
A cinematic letter to baseball player Jackie Robinson offering a historical and social perspective on racism.
LITTLE PALESTINE, DIARY OF A SIEGE
Director: Abdallah Al-Khatib
A Palestinian activist records a visual diary of the brutal siege of Yarmouk refugee camp by the Syrian regime.
Echoes of the Past:
KAL FATEMEH
Director: Mahdi Zamanpour Kiasari
Kal Fatemeh, who lives with her boys live in an isolated region of Iran, struggles with the guilt she feels for her only daughter’s unhappy past.
OBJETOS REBELDES
Director: Carolina Arias Ortiz
The director travels to Costa Rica to reconnect with her dying father in this essay, which unfolds along several strata, revealing the cracks in the country’s history.
Under Silence and Earth
Director: Gisela Restrepo
The filmmaker searches for the body of her aunt Gisela, who took part in armed conflict in Colombia, shedding light on an emblematic woman whose name she inherited, but whom she never had the chance to meet.
what (not) to doc 