Letters to the Prime Minister

In a café in the heart of Parc-Extension, a woman sits patiently, listening. She takes notes. Before her, a myriad of people with diverse accents take turns, expressing complaints, requests, grievances, or declarations of love. The woman? Marie-Célie Agnant. Profession? Writer. What is she doing there? She is listening to her neighbors in Parc-Extension in order to write a collective letter to the neighborhood’s new Member of Parliament, and incidentally Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. A simple film, beautifully shot and edited, with the attention to detail, care for listening, and openness to the beauty of community that filmmaker Andrés Livov has made a hallmark of his work, most recently exemplified in his latest film The Blueberry Blues.

Letters to the Prime Minister is a short film like a balm of beauty and sensitivity, reminding us why we fall in love with the city again: its intersecting paths, its vibrant crowd, and its thousands of life stories that coexist and hint at one another—in a café, a library, the subway, a laundromat; these social spaces that struggle to resist the erosion of the social fabric. Let us take its poetic impulse as an invitation to greet a stranger, start an unexpected conversation, or question a neighbor in the hallway. Who knows where it might lead us!

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director