The films of Jean-François Caissy
There are filmmakers who, far from being drawn to the fleeting allure of the extraordinary, listen to and observe that life with eager attention. They manage to reveal its indefinable beauty to us, to turn our attention away from the hypnotic and empty aesthetics of social media and remind us that real life lies elsewhere—that its rhythm is hard to pin down, but that with a little attention, poetry, and patience, we can capture its essence.
Jean-François Caissy is perhaps the one who does this best. Because he films with such attention and respect for the passage of time, he deeply soothes the hyperactivity of contemporary representations. An inimitable, unspectacular rhythm—the rhythm of a beating heart, of bellies swelling and emptying, of exchanged glances, of leaves turning red and then falling. The rhythm of life, but with such intelligence in his gaze, framing, and storytelling that, curiously and very skillfully, they never provoke boredom or a loss of attention. This is a precious talent, almost beyond hope. Trained in photography and a professional sound recordist (does that explain it?), Jean-François Caissy captures reality with his senses on high alert.
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Born in the village of Carleton-sur-Mer in Quebec’s Gaspésie region, Jean-François Caissy works as an independent artist in the fields of cinema and visual arts. After studying photography and making a promising debut with the documentary Mating Season (2005), he directed Journey's end (2009), which earned him his first international recognition. His subsequent films, Guidelines (2014) and First Stripes (2018), also gained international acclaim, screening at the Berlinale, the BFI London Film Festival, the Viennale, Hot Docs, and MoMA’s Doc Fortnight. Alongside his filmmaking, Caissy maintains a visual arts practice. His video installation Derby (2011) was presented at Centre Clark in Montreal and at Anthology Film Archives in New York. More recently, his video installation Exposition agricole (2017) was presented at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal and at Espace F gallery in Matane. His most recent film, Kindergarten (2025), had its world premiere at RIDM, where it received the Special Jury Prize.
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Guidelines
_Guidelines_ explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution ...
First Stripes
Over the course of a 12-week intensive training program, young adults are gradually transformed into members of the Canadian Armed Forces. For these future soldiers, the group is now more important than the individual, and the country comes before oneself. Without judgment, _First Stripes_ offers an immersion into the singular world of the military through their basic training. A mandatory step...
Journey's End
In a remote corner of the Quebec countryside, between a road and a headland that plunges into the sea, an abandoned motel has been converted into a retirement home. _Journey’s End_ is an elegiac exploration of life and aging, set in a place where time seems to have ground to a halt.
Guidelines
_Guidelines_ explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution ...
First Stripes
Over the course of a 12-week intensive training program, young adults are gradually transformed into members of the Canadian Armed Forces. For these future soldiers, the group is now more important than the individual, and the country comes before oneself. Without judgment, _First Stripes_ offers an immersion into the singular world of the military through their basic training. A mandatory step...
Journey's End
In a remote corner of the Quebec countryside, between a road and a headland that plunges into the sea, an abandoned motel has been converted into a retirement home. _Journey’s End_ is an elegiac exploration of life and aging, set in a place where time seems to have ground to a halt.
