“I’m going to stick my posters! Katherine Jerkovic told me at the end of the interview. She was dragging a box with posters of her new feature film, the coyote, which will be screened this Friday. An auteur film, it goes without saying. This explains it.
The second feature film by the Quebec filmmaker tells the story of Camilo, a Montrealer in his fifties of Mexican origin who wants to find work as a chef after having had to close his restaurant, Le coyote, a decade earlier. He does housekeeping at night and sends resumes that go unanswered.
We gradually guess the reasons for his setbacks when his drug addict daughter, with whom he has broken ties, introduces him to his grandson, whom he did not know existed. She would like to entrust it to him while she heals herself. However, at the same time he received an interesting proposal from a restaurant owner in La Malbaie.
This is the kind of characters that we still see too little in our cinema. “Mexican characters, especially in our cinema, are seasonal workers, not very educated people,” notes the filmmaker, whose mother has lived in Mexico for several years.
The Latin American people who are here do all kinds of things. I know some who teach at the university. They are integrated people, who speak French.
Katherine Jerkovic, filmmaker
Link with Quebec
Katherine Jerkovic’s father, born in Argentina to Croatian parents, himself taught in the sociology department of the University of Montreal. The filmmaker’s parents, who fled the dictatorship in South America, separated shortly after Katherine’s birth, in Moncton, where she lived only briefly. She followed her Uruguayan mother to Belgium and then to Montevideo, which she left at the age of 18 to study cinema at Concordia University in the late 1990s.
“I’ve always had a connection with Quebec because I came to visit my father in Montreal every year,” she says. French was the language of my first schooling. »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
movie scene the coyote
Jorge Martinez Colorado, who plays Camilo, an immigrant torn between his professional future and his new responsibilities as a grandfather, was revealed in the series Raspberry timeby Philippe Falardeau… in the role of a seasonal Mexican worker.
The director smiles when I point this out to her. “I think TV is better than movies,” she says of on-screen diversity. There have been second-hand lovesby Eva Kabuya, Dominoes (by Zoe Pelchat), I would like to be erased (by Eric Piccoli). TV took the lead. We see something closer to our reality. »
It’s true. The titles she names, that said, are those of web series with limited influence. You have to look in the Tou.tv submenus for the second season of I would like to be erased to find it (Jean-Nicolas Verreault is particularly admirable there).
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
movie scene the coyote
A reflection on life
Katherine Jerkovic does not give herself a mission to change the representation of certain groups in cinema. She talks about what she knows, like most artists. She won the 2018 Canadian First Feature Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for Roads in February. The story of a young photographer who returns to Uruguay to see her grandmother again, mourning her father and her former life.
the coyote, which was also selected for TIFF last September, was presented at the Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal and in competition at the Santa Barbara Festival in California. It won Best Canadian Film at the Whistler Film Festival, where Jorge Martinez Colorado won Best Actor.
The obvious link between Katherine Jerkovic’s two feature films is the central role played by recalcitrant grandparents. “There are also people in both films who have left for long periods of time and come back to their families and feel like strangers there,” notes the filmmaker. the coyote is less autobiographical than Roads. It’s less of a tale of immigrant melancholy. »
Did she have in mind, by reporting on an experience of immigration to Quebec, to get out of certain shackles and clichés?
The question of immigration was not really present at the start. It was while writing that I asked myself this question.
Katherine Jerkovic, filmmaker
“At the beginning, it was the story of a man who is at a crossroads and who lives in a dilemma. What he experiences is not related to his condition as an immigrant. It could happen to anyone,” she adds.
Katherine Jerkovic describes her film as a reflection on life, with all its unforeseen events and all that is beyond our control. Obstacles that feed our respective paths, she recalls.
Lucid, she is aware that the coyote is not a popular film destined for huge commercial success. “It’s a small offering, for those who want to take it. I wanted to open up a space, take the time to offer something outside of the overload of images, adventures and emotions. We often try to evoke a strong emotion, an instantaneous reaction. It is not a guarantee that the film leaves a trace. I’m a little against the grain, like others in auteur cinema,” she laughs.
It is in this counter-current cinema that we often discover the works that deserve our attention.
the coyote is currently in theaters.