EIFF: Psychological, French-Canadian gem formally opens 10-day movie fest

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The cooler climate is ushering in movie pageant season, beginning with the thirty seventh Edmonton Worldwide Movie Competition. Beginning Thursday with Kevin T. Landry’s A Shit Day because the official opening choice, the EIFF will display a few of the finest movies of the 12 months from world wide by means of Oct. 1.

It’s additionally an official Oscar-qualifying occasion so the programming is all the time top-notch. In truth, final 12 months’s Oscar-winning brief movie An Irish Goodbye was certified by the EIFF after it gained the pageant’s Grand Jury award.

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It’s A Marathon is the apt theme of this 12 months’s pageant, which can see 115 movies in 4 venues: Garneau Theatre, Telus World of Science, the Artwork Gallery of Alberta and Stanley Milner Library downtown.

Learn extra concerning the pageant right here, different EIFF opinions within the Arts part of edmontonjournal.com, and a full listing of movies, showtimes and tickets at edmontonfilmfest.com.

French Provincial-noir

Earlier than the opening credit of A Shit Day even seem, an uncommon juxtaposition in life is introduced.

Maude, our protagonist, works for Lotto-Gold. Each week, she delivers a large cheque for hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to a fortunate jackpot winner and conducts a video interview the place they routinely declare gratitude for by no means having to work once more, the power to bathe family members with items and purchase themselves that large home within the nation.

Maude’s world couldn’t be farther from this. She’s removed from the forest dwelling she grew up in and cherished, her manipulative ex is abusive and her teenage son is following in his father’s unlucky footsteps. Unexpectedly having her son whereas heading to the following winner dwelling in a distant cabin two and a half hours exterior of Montreal to do a job her boss insists a highschool senior might do, the check-engine gentle flicks on. As soon as they arrive, fortunate Gaétan Dubois is lower than cooperative till it’s slowly revealed simply how horrible her day, and day-after-day in her life appears to be and he decides to intervene.

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This gesture is much from that of a knight in shining armour, and the already darkish ambiance takes a flip towards the horrifying. One sudden step after one other leads us by means of untrodden territory with out a lot of a guess at what’s subsequent till the previous few minutes tie up what was specified by the primary few with one closing swift and spectacular fell swoop.

The story apart, a superb forged performs these dynamic characters flawlessly and the cinematography is a visible deal with that delivers a sophisticated piece of French Provincial noir.

*A Shit Day is the EIFF’s official opening-night movie, screening at 6:30 p.m. at Metro Cinema and adopted by a Q-and-A with director Kevin T. Landry and producer Macha Houssart.

REVIEW

A Shit Day

Directed by Kevin T. Landry

That includes Eve Ringuette, Réal Bossé, Valérie Blais, Isabelle Giroux

91 minutes

Canada