L'Odyssée des enfants d'ULIS

The End of Summer

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

Bodysong

Documentary footage from various sources, set to music. Showing the whole of human life, from birth to death and beyond.

Seeing Through the Darkness

Carried by an immersive sound environment that plunges us in the reality and the perceptions of these resilient and inspiring people, this film questions our own blindness face to violence and suffering of our time — despite the overabundance of images that reach us — and highlights the urgency of lending an ear to hear these stories.

Rara Avis

On a sailboat in the middle of the Ocean, five teenagers in rehabilitation are travelling with adults of different ages and backgrounds. Off unknown coastlines, the boat’s space becomes a huis-clos in which everyone faces their own difficulties, the challenge of living together and also the manoeuvres of sailing, the Ocean and its turmoil—until the arrival on land.

Bloom

Three groups of adolescent girl friends from Quebec are going through tough changes. The process of inventing their own bodies and identity are being recorded on the move by their smartphones and shared with their peers from other parts of the networked world. Due to their strong need of external confirmation, they alter their lives into a series of retouched pictures and videos. The film camera, however, captures their feelings of void, loneliness and deep inner insecurities that are not so attractive for Periscope, TikTok or Instagram. An intimate portrait of adolescence is made with full comprehension of experiencing and self-presentation in a generation growing up on the brink of the real and virtual worlds.

Les filles c’est pas pareil

Hide and Seek

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

Wow

In this French Canadian film, the lives of teenagers are examined in fantasy sequences and through the use of documentary interviews. Prompted by the filmmaker, nine teenagers individually act out their secret dreams and, between times, talk about their world as they see it. The fantasy sequences make creative use of animation, unusual film-development techniques, and stills. Babette conceives of herself as an abbess defending her fortress, a convent; Michelle is transported in a dream of love where all time ceases; Philippe is the revolutionary, defeating all the institutions that plague him, and so on, through all their fantasies. All the actual preoccupations of youth are raised: authority, drugs, social conflict, sex. Jutra's style in "Wow" exhibits his innovative approach to storytelling and filmmaking, showcasing his talents as a director during that period. With English subtitles.

Easy Lessons

Kafia, a young girl on the brink of adulthood, has to leave behind a lot of what defined her Somalian life as she tries to adapt to her new existence in Hungary. As the family’s cultural values and taboos start to fall apart, Kafia tries to explain and make sense of all these changes to her mother left behind.

An Accidental Life

An Accidental Life is a deeply personal and vulnerable portrait of Quinn Brett, an ambitious, record-setting climber who strives to make meaning out of tragedy in the years following a near-fatal rock climbing accident on El Capitan that left her paralyzed.

Come On Children

Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.

Oasis

As they enter their teenage years, twin brothers Raphaël and Rémi see their fraternal relationship crumble as one of them, suffering from an increasingly marked disability, remains a prisoner of childhood. But for one last summer, as they contemplate nature, time seems to stop momentarily.

I Am a Girl

Six girls coming of age, ready to become something extraordinary.

Tender

Late summer, a small lake, teenage rascals. Mia, 11 and too wise for her age, asks Hugo, 15 and blasé, to tell her about Chaïnes – a girl he spent evenings with at the lake, trying to seduce her. He felt the fear of declaring his love and the torment provoked by the exuberant but secretive Chaïnes, who never shows her emotions. Mia and her siblings surround them, like a choir. A slow, dark, documentary in which time doesn't seem to exist.

Apathy, Limbo & Nothingness

A teenager reflects on his current life situation, as he smokes a cigarette. He expresses concerns about the way he lives, has lived and will live. Past, present and future.

The In Between

Following the death of her brother, filmmaker Robie Flores returns to her hometown Eagle Pass on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence – quinceañeras, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers and beyond – that invite her to soak up the details of the home her brother adored and she ignored. What emerges is a playful dance between a personal and collective coming-of-age portrait of kids on the border and Robie herself as she rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief.

The mother of the disabled

Petrouchka is a young Gabonese woman who takes care of her brother who is a victim of a disability. Her love for her brother leads her to create an association that aims to help all young people who live in this situation and is now called the mother of the disabled. She proudly shares her career with her followers on social networks.

Emma