ESPRITS LIBRES

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The classic tale of a loveable, outcast hunchback and the gypsy girl he adores is transformed into a musical, warmhearted animated classic in this delightfully updated version of a stirring masterpiece.

Omniscient

Ravi, a progressive schoolteacher in a small village helps fight an epidemic by getting his students inoculated. He incurs the wrath of local witchdoctor in the process.

Ruth

The year 2000. Maya, a young Londoner, goes to the small village of her Spanish girlfriend, Ruth, who has just died in an accident. She wants to say goodbye, but the shock and anxiety of presenting herself as the “foreign girlfriend” to family and friends she doesn't know and who speak a different language, is compounded by the perplexity of discovering that nobody knows who she is.

Barotraumer

On Way Ginette

Ginette dreams of becoming an actress and sees an opportunity when she hears about Louis’ project, a young filmmaker who wants to shoot a tender cannibal romance. Louis spots Virgile, a young butcher, to play the lead role, unaware that he is also Ginette’s casual lover. When the three meet on set, things don’t go as planned, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and turning the shoot into unexpected chaos.

PALOMA

Paloma is a young adult who finds herself living in automatic mode, following every imposed social norm, already working in an office and living alone in a studio apartment. Her daily life passes fleetingly and with little taste, until one night, after a long day of work, she receives an email titled FOR MY FUTURE SELF, which prompts her to change her life.

Sofia

Judgement

Joy, a mother of a 4 year-old girl, finally decides to file a case under domestic violence against her abusive husband, Dante.

Skai Blue

Tom meets Simon, a Cameroon refugee on a dating app. They have a short, but passionate relationship and both hope to find a better life, happiness and love. However, Tom realizes that this relationship has a huge impact on his own life and is forced to make a difficult choice...

Automagic

On his return home, androgynous-looking Madhu attempts to seduce Ratnakar, his rickshaw driver, who is practicing celibacy in preparation for a religious pilgrimage.

Next of Kin

Fred is a drag queen performing on a cabaret stage when he learns that his father, Jean, has died. In the emergency room, he comes face to face with his ghost. Over the three days following this event, Fred and his sister Cassandre try to organize Jean's funeral while Fred seems to be the only one to see him.

Estrangeiro

Kaio is not from this planet. On a Saturday night, he goes out with his Earthling friends and tries to deal with his feeling of not belonging.

Neutre

Six soldiers and their lieutenant are on an exploratory mission a few days before the end of a training course. Unfortunately, due to a mistake, the group gets lost and accidentally ends up on French territory. The lieutenant is then faced with a real dilemma: returning to Switzerland via the nearest customs post means accepting the legal consequences—in fact, any Swiss national who crosses the border with an assault rifle is automatically considered a deserter—or returning to the country illegally through the forest, which is foreign territory and sometimes dangerous.

The Letter Men

"The Letter Men" is based on the real love letters written by Gilbert Bradley to his sweetheart, Gordon Bowsher during WWII. Exchanged between 1938 and 1941, the letters were uncovered in 2017 and represent the largest known collection LGBTQ love letters from that time period. Using text from the actual letters, "The Letter Men" follows the two men as their fight to keep their love alive in the face of war and loss.

Trois fois passera

The story, in three stages, of a friendship between three guys. They have taken different paths, but find themselves equally faced with the failure of their lives. The parody is not exempt from what remains a fine analysis of behavior and environment. For these three Quebecers are, in a way, us, as we have been rendered by a society in search of itself.

Cora

2064. Cora, a Danish woman, finds an unfinished documentary in which Benjamim, her Brazilian father, attempted - fifty years earlier - to investigate the story of his own parents: Teo, who, afflicted by insanity, died when he was still a child, and Elenir, a mysterious woman he’d barely heard of. In the course of his investigation, Benjamim discovers that both characters are part of a complex family puzzle, filled with traumas and taboos, and starts seeing himself as an important piece in the puzzle. The footage found in Benjamim’s documentary is reorganized by his daughter, Cora, in an attempt to understand her family’s lost past.

The Fishbowl Girl

Wei, a young lesbian, goes to Thailand on a graduation trip. After witnessing an intimate interaction between the girl she fancies and a male friend, she goes to a Thai massage parlour, but the experience isn't as beautiful as she envisioned.

Born In Summer

A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.

Second souffle

At 16, Gabriel takes over the camera of his deceased older brother and films his daily life with his little sister who is growing up, his mother who is sinking into madness and a boy from his neighborhood. An unexpected encounter will lead Gabriel to film a first love.

Enigma do Pici