Québec Contemporary Cinema
Quebec has always had a privileged relationship with documentary cinema, a tremendous melting pot of its artistic, social and political modernity. Nearly 60 years after the birth of direct cinema, juggling continuity and inventiveness, the local filmmakers are still pursuing a rich dialogue with their society. Here, you will find an anthology of contemporary films made by notorious documentary filmmakers or belonging to a new generation. Through a bright diversity of styles and viewpoints, these filmmakers all share a boundless creativity and an uninhibited freedom that question, challenge, reconcile and help to better understand today’s Quebec and the rest of the world
Visual identity created by Moïa Jobin-Paré
The THROUGH OUR LENS page lists all the Quebec films available on Tënk. It allows you to dive into an exploration of Quebec documentary cinema and discover an anthology of films made by both renowned and emerging documentary filmmakers. Through a dazzling diversity of forms and perspectives, these filmmakers have in common an overflowing creativity and an uninhibited freedom that questions, confronts, reconciles and helps us better understand Quebec and the world.
To perform a more detailed search on Quebec films, use our search engine !
Also discover fascinating interviews with local filmmakers in our Fragments section :
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Baby Drawings
Duration: 8 minutes
Subscription access
How do we learn to draw? First, we practice holding a crayon without eating it. Then, just a few years later, we’re using sophisticated symbols to represent ourselves, our families, and our imaginations. _Baby Drawings_ covers the development of childhood art from the very first stage of scribbles all the way to the development of spatial perspective.
The Body/transmutationem
Duration: 30 minutes
Subscription access
_The Body/transmutationem_ is a poetic and intimate documentary short that explores gender transition through the intersecting journeys of two queer individuals. Set to the verses of Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano, the film blends everyday scenes, sensitive interviews, and contemplative imagery to examine bodily transformation, identity, and freedom.
Retracing Their Steps
Duration: 42 minutes
Subscription access
By opening forgotten boxes in the Montreal Gay Archive Center, fragments of history from the LGBTQIA2S+ community are rediscovered. Among them are Michael and René, the first couple to marry in Canada, Linda and Catherine, two owners of the lesbian bar Le Kiev, and Kimura, multidisciplinary artist of diverse origins. The portraits of these diverse characters bear witness to the diversity of Mon...
Eviction
Duration: 2h24
Subscription access
Since 2010, Parthenais has held within its walls the life of a whole queer community. They are gay, lesbian, trans, and they live together in Centre-Sud in the heart of Montreal, in a triplex that is falling apart. Between the parties that sometimes welcome more than two hundred people until the wee hours of the morning, the collective dinners, the great joys and the small despairs, this old fl...
The Sparkle
Duration: 34 minutes
Subscription access
Kim and Billy work at carnivals. This summer, Kim procrastinates. He plans to leave this family of colleagues to devote himself to his passion, the search for precious stones. The layoff of Billy, his best friend, accelerates his disenchantment. We always dream of elsewhere.
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu : Du bord des bêtes
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu : Du bord des bêtes
New product!Duration: 49 minutes
Subscription access
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu is one of the most prolific Quebec writers of the past 50 years. In both his personal life and his work, he is a man of words who boldly and unapologetically voices his convictions. Enriched with excerpts from his writings that deepen his reflections, this documentary reveals both the light and shadow within the man and his work. It also captures the whispers of his house —...
Days
Subscription access
Marie-Philip is a PhD student and part-time professor who loves cats and _Harry Potter_. But one week before her 29th birthday, she is diagnosed with breast cancer. For a year, without false modesty, we follow her through each step as she confides in us with shocking honesty. An ode to life, to courage and to the resilience of all those who fight every day against disease.
Wild Feast
Subscription access
A wounded moose escapes its hunters, later dying deep in the forest and becoming... a communal feast. As the seasons go by, mammals, birds and insects invite themselves to the banquet – multiplying ensuing games, rituals and conflicts. In exploring and occasionally foiling nature’s wildlife codes, our story becomes a simple yet poignant reflection on death, on its natural place in this world an...
No Crying at the Dinner Table
Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her family. The result is a portrait tinged with love and sorrows, revealing intergenerational traumas.
Délire atta
Subscription access
_Délire atta_ takes found footage and sound from six archival films and transforms them through a process of abstraction and recontextualization. Image and sound engage in a dialogue of texture and transformation, revealing unexpected resonances within the archive and generating new possibilities from what might otherwise be seen as fixed or obsolete.
Jekyllum
Subscription access
Humorously described by its creators as “the first horror film entirely made on a computer”, _Jekyllum_ is a pioneering work of computer animation in Canada. The result of a collaboration between the former Centre de calcul (1965-1988) and Centre audio-visuel (1968-1997) of the Université de Montréal, _Jekyllum_ was first and foremost intended to showcase the graphic possibilities of the CDC170...
La stéréochimie dynamique
Subscription access
An innovative audiovisual teaching method for chemistry developed at the Université de Montréal by Professor Henri Favre, _La stéréochimie dynamique_ (Dynamic Stereochemistry) was first and foremost a response to a pedagogical problem: how to make students see and understand molecular transformations in space and time, using a blackboard and two-dimensional plans on paper? “Visualizing these ph...
Aux sources de la vie
Subscription access
"The nec plus ultra of my work is the chapter entitled _Aux sources de la vie_ (The Sources of Life). [...] Plants are wonderfully organized from the point of view of reproduction. It's a marvel of ingenuity, spectacular to the last point! The secrets of nature lie in the infinitesimally small, in the minutiae of nature." (Father Venance, interview for _Le Samedi_, May 20, 1961)
The Dissolution of the Landscape
The Dissolution of the Landscape
Duration: 24 minutesSubscription access
Through visual metaphors, the film offers an incursion into an inner landscape, a dive into subconscious, a mix of childhood memories and recurrent dreams, between surrealism and automatism.
Beaupré the Giant
Subscription access
Beaupré the Giant marked his era with his 8’3” height. Though he died young and far from home in 1904, his journey as a phenomenon was only just beginning. In a stunning series of twists and turns, his mummified body would take more than 80 years to find its way back home.
Create; Survive
Subscription access
How can you continue to create when you can barely feed yourself? Alex Anna presents their film _Scars_ at a sunlit festival, but behind their apparent success hides a ceaseless fight with their own mind. Expressing the brutality of loneliness through a poetic act of cinematography, _Create; survive_ confronts our virtual and public identities against the intimate reality of depression.
Afterwards
Subscription access
Inside a shelter, participants in a talking circle share their experiences of intimate partner violence as a way to regain their dignity and strength to act. Powerfully empathetic, _Afterwards_ creates a space of sisterhood and solidarity—a chorus of voices breaking down the walls of silence.
Emergency! A Critical Situation
Emergency! A Critical Situation
Duration: 2h46Subscription access
_Emergency! A Critical Situation_ explores the reality of an evening shift in the emergency department of the Centre hospitalier Pierre-Boucher, and reveals the daily lives of the nurses who work hard to provide this essential service to the public. The camera follows the footsteps of these professionals, revealing what they have to put up with to cope with the demands of their work, which is s...
Death is Dangerous, it Could Hurt
Death is Dangerous, it Could Hurt
Duration: 38 minutesThree rhythmic storylines are characterized by the rituals of everyday life and the vicissitudes of existence, coalescing around a common experience: that of shooting up as a mode of drug use.
Baby Drawings
Duration: 8 minutes
Subscription access
How do we learn to draw? First, we practice holding a crayon without eating it. Then, just a few years later, we’re using sophisticated symbols to represent ourselves, our families, and our imaginations. _Baby Drawings_ covers the development of childhood art from the very first stage of scribbles all the way to the development of spatial perspective.
The Body/transmutationem
Duration: 30 minutes
Subscription access
_The Body/transmutationem_ is a poetic and intimate documentary short that explores gender transition through the intersecting journeys of two queer individuals. Set to the verses of Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano, the film blends everyday scenes, sensitive interviews, and contemplative imagery to examine bodily transformation, identity, and freedom.
Retracing Their Steps
Duration: 42 minutes
Subscription access
By opening forgotten boxes in the Montreal Gay Archive Center, fragments of history from the LGBTQIA2S+ community are rediscovered. Among them are Michael and René, the first couple to marry in Canada, Linda and Catherine, two owners of the lesbian bar Le Kiev, and Kimura, multidisciplinary artist of diverse origins. The portraits of these diverse characters bear witness to the diversity of Mon...
Eviction
Duration: 2h24
Subscription access
Since 2010, Parthenais has held within its walls the life of a whole queer community. They are gay, lesbian, trans, and they live together in Centre-Sud in the heart of Montreal, in a triplex that is falling apart. Between the parties that sometimes welcome more than two hundred people until the wee hours of the morning, the collective dinners, the great joys and the small despairs, this old fl...
The Sparkle
Duration: 34 minutes
Subscription access
Kim and Billy work at carnivals. This summer, Kim procrastinates. He plans to leave this family of colleagues to devote himself to his passion, the search for precious stones. The layoff of Billy, his best friend, accelerates his disenchantment. We always dream of elsewhere.
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu : Du bord des bêtes
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu : Du bord des bêtes
New product!Duration: 49 minutes
Subscription access
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu is one of the most prolific Quebec writers of the past 50 years. In both his personal life and his work, he is a man of words who boldly and unapologetically voices his convictions. Enriched with excerpts from his writings that deepen his reflections, this documentary reveals both the light and shadow within the man and his work. It also captures the whispers of his house —...
Days
Subscription access
Marie-Philip is a PhD student and part-time professor who loves cats and _Harry Potter_. But one week before her 29th birthday, she is diagnosed with breast cancer. For a year, without false modesty, we follow her through each step as she confides in us with shocking honesty. An ode to life, to courage and to the resilience of all those who fight every day against disease.
Wild Feast
Subscription access
A wounded moose escapes its hunters, later dying deep in the forest and becoming... a communal feast. As the seasons go by, mammals, birds and insects invite themselves to the banquet – multiplying ensuing games, rituals and conflicts. In exploring and occasionally foiling nature’s wildlife codes, our story becomes a simple yet poignant reflection on death, on its natural place in this world an...
No Crying at the Dinner Table
Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her family. The result is a portrait tinged with love and sorrows, revealing intergenerational traumas.
Délire atta
Subscription access
_Délire atta_ takes found footage and sound from six archival films and transforms them through a process of abstraction and recontextualization. Image and sound engage in a dialogue of texture and transformation, revealing unexpected resonances within the archive and generating new possibilities from what might otherwise be seen as fixed or obsolete.
Jekyllum
Subscription access
Humorously described by its creators as “the first horror film entirely made on a computer”, _Jekyllum_ is a pioneering work of computer animation in Canada. The result of a collaboration between the former Centre de calcul (1965-1988) and Centre audio-visuel (1968-1997) of the Université de Montréal, _Jekyllum_ was first and foremost intended to showcase the graphic possibilities of the CDC170...
La stéréochimie dynamique
Subscription access
An innovative audiovisual teaching method for chemistry developed at the Université de Montréal by Professor Henri Favre, _La stéréochimie dynamique_ (Dynamic Stereochemistry) was first and foremost a response to a pedagogical problem: how to make students see and understand molecular transformations in space and time, using a blackboard and two-dimensional plans on paper? “Visualizing these ph...
Aux sources de la vie
Subscription access
"The nec plus ultra of my work is the chapter entitled _Aux sources de la vie_ (The Sources of Life). [...] Plants are wonderfully organized from the point of view of reproduction. It's a marvel of ingenuity, spectacular to the last point! The secrets of nature lie in the infinitesimally small, in the minutiae of nature." (Father Venance, interview for _Le Samedi_, May 20, 1961)
The Dissolution of the Landscape
The Dissolution of the Landscape
Duration: 24 minutesSubscription access
Through visual metaphors, the film offers an incursion into an inner landscape, a dive into subconscious, a mix of childhood memories and recurrent dreams, between surrealism and automatism.
Beaupré the Giant
Subscription access
Beaupré the Giant marked his era with his 8’3” height. Though he died young and far from home in 1904, his journey as a phenomenon was only just beginning. In a stunning series of twists and turns, his mummified body would take more than 80 years to find its way back home.
Create; Survive
Subscription access
How can you continue to create when you can barely feed yourself? Alex Anna presents their film _Scars_ at a sunlit festival, but behind their apparent success hides a ceaseless fight with their own mind. Expressing the brutality of loneliness through a poetic act of cinematography, _Create; survive_ confronts our virtual and public identities against the intimate reality of depression.
Afterwards
Subscription access
Inside a shelter, participants in a talking circle share their experiences of intimate partner violence as a way to regain their dignity and strength to act. Powerfully empathetic, _Afterwards_ creates a space of sisterhood and solidarity—a chorus of voices breaking down the walls of silence.
Emergency! A Critical Situation
Emergency! A Critical Situation
Duration: 2h46Subscription access
_Emergency! A Critical Situation_ explores the reality of an evening shift in the emergency department of the Centre hospitalier Pierre-Boucher, and reveals the daily lives of the nurses who work hard to provide this essential service to the public. The camera follows the footsteps of these professionals, revealing what they have to put up with to cope with the demands of their work, which is s...
Death is Dangerous, it Could Hurt
Death is Dangerous, it Could Hurt
Duration: 38 minutesThree rhythmic storylines are characterized by the rituals of everyday life and the vicissitudes of existence, coalescing around a common experience: that of shooting up as a mode of drug use.
