The digital magazine team Panorama-cinema, which has been organizing occasional screenings at the Cinémathèque québécoise for ten years, will inaugurate a brand new festival in January 2025, Montreal Critics’ Week. The films presented will thus be selected by critics from various backgrounds — a unique model in Quebec, imported in reaction to important changes taking place within major festivals around the world.
While these major events, such as the Festival du nouveau cinéma, pride themselves on offering dozens, even hundreds, of films each year, Montreal Critics’ Week will focus more on the quality of its programming and will only present a dozen films, including double programs, for one week only. Each session will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers or experts.
“We draw a lot of inspiration from what is done at Berlin Critics’ Week,” explains Mathieu Li-Goyette, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Panorama-cinema. I took my first steps as a critic on the international scene there, in 2018. I was marked by the long debates after their double programs. The filmmakers of both films were often accompanied by professors, critics or philosophers and could discuss for one, two, and even three hours. It was super-stimulating. »
Programmers-reviews
Mr. Li-Goyette does not yet know exactly what his festival’s programming will consist of, but he plans to present different genres, both Quebec and international films, as well as new releases and restorations. “We want to mix audiences and go against the grain of most festivals which program like the algorithms of social networks, by forming bubbles, silos. We want to bring genre films together with more experimental offerings, for example. »
“Unlike traditional festivals, we do not want to have a jury or award prizes,” explains Mr. Li-Goyette. We essentially want to demonstrate that the act of criticism is an act of programming. These two fields are also essential to mediation around films. And the fact of presenting fewer films allows us to think of our entire programming as a coherent whole, which allows us to tell a story, especially since the public can see all the films. »
It is therefore a small committee made up of film critics who will choose the films, after “long debates”, says Mr. Li-Goyette. The latter will be part of it, as well as Ariel Esteban Cayer, co-founder, distributor and former programmer at the Fantasia festival. Will be added another critic of Panorama-cinema, a member of the Quebec Association of Cinema Critics from another magazine, and two international critics. Besides MM. Li-Goyette and Cayer, the programmers should change every year.
“Do things differently”
This more horizontal structure intentionally counterbalances what organizers see as “concerning changes” currently occurring in the governance of larger festivals. “Programmers have less and less power,” summarizes Ariel Esteban Cayer, who lost his position as director of a more experimental section of Fantasia, Camera Lucida, against his will last year. He believes that politicians, granting organizations or boards of directors, depending on the case, are interfering more and more in the artistic direction of festivals.
The Berlinale caused a lot of ink to flow for this reason last winter. The artistic director of the world’s busiest festival, Carlo Chatrian, was pushed out by the German Minister of Culture because she wanted to combine the positions of general and artistic management for a single person. Three hundred personalities from the cinema world, including Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, even signed an open letter to denounce his ouster, fearing that his auteurist signature would be replaced by more commercial programming, given that important private partners of the Berlinale, from which Audi and L’Oréal, which contributed a third of the organization’s budget, withdrew last year.
At the Rotterdam International Film Festival, it was rather the expulsion of programmers that was criticized. Filmmaker Mike Hoolboom wrote about the situation in January 2023 in a column for Panorama-cinema : “In a classic neoliberal move, the bosses (festival director Vanja Kaludjercic and general director Marjan van de Haar) fired, or intimidated, out of their positions, more than 40 employees. Full-time programmers have been replaced by part-time independent workers. […] The changes in Rotterdam have nothing to do with money, but with a takeover by accountants. »
Quebec critics have compared these events to the secret dismissal this winter of Nicolas Girard Deltruc, who had directed the Festival du nouveau cinéma for 17 years. It was also deplored that it was the producer Michel Pradier, a member of the board of directors with no experience in festival management, who was appointed interim director.
“We observe a certain dissatisfaction in the festival environment,” maintains Mr. Cayer. I experienced these problems myself. So, I came away from this experience motivated by a desire to do things differently, if only in the fact of designing a festival that would give more freedom to its team. But, more broadly, we hope to be able to complete Montreal’s offering by defending an idea of cinema that appeals to us, with strong voices and avant-garde forms. »