Sophie Dupuis wasn't ready to call herself queer — but making her film Solo changed everything

Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This TIFF 2023 edition by director Sophie Dupuis focuses on her film Solo.

While I was writing Solo, I knew this film wasn't going to be like my previous ones. But what I didn't expect was that I would find myself and embrace my own queerness while working with our incredible LGBTQIA2+ cast and crew.

Solo is a queer film about a love story between two young men in drag, so we needed queer people both in front of and behind the camera. I'd already worked with Théodore Pellerin twice. He's the kind of actor you don't meet very often. He's a diamond in the rough — precious, rare, capable of anything — and who has also become one of my favorite people on this planet. A young man I've loved to watch grow into the magnificent person he is.

I knew he'd be the lead in my next film; I wrote Solo partly for him. For the first time, I could see an actor's face in my head when I was writing a screenplay. That had never happened to me before.

It was while chatting with Théodore that we came up with the idea of proposing the role of Olivier to Félix Maritaud, who we'd seen in BPM and Sauvage. Knowing that he's well-known and involved in the LGBTQIA2+ community in Paris, I was terrified of sending him my script. I was going to take his response as a decision: if he didn't like it, it meant the story wasn't relevant.

But Félix loved it. I'll always remember our first meeting — connected on FaceTime, him on a beach in Italy. I could hear the waves crashing on the sand as we got to know each other. By the time we hung up, we were both so moved we were crying. It was as if we already knew we were going to be great friends.

In order to create the film's drag group, I spent the entire summer of 2021 in an audition room, meeting all the LGBTQIA2+ actors and drag artists interested in the project. I must have met around 200 people. And every day was more touching than the last.

We heard all kinds of testimonials. Some of them even brought tears to our eyes: the story of a man who opened the first gay bar in a remote region of Quebec, or the moving account of one of them who told us about his arrival in Montreal, where he finally met his people and was able to build a community of like-minded folks.

As for the actors, they sometimes arrived a little apprehensive in the audition room. Before surrendering themselves, they wanted to make sure they were in a safe place to let their queerness unfold. On more than one occasion, we were told that they usually had to "hide their homosexuality" in the audition room to ensure a better chance of landing roles.

Each of these moving encounters confirmed to me the importance of making this film. And after bringing on Jean Marchand, Vlad Alexis, Tommy Joubert and Marc-André Leclair to play my drag group, I listened to them tell me how much they would have needed a film like this when they were young — something that recognized, validated and allowed them to accept themselves. A film that features queer characters but for whom queerness is never an issue. A film that simply tells a love story, a family story, a friendship story. A film about a chosen family, courage, self-discovery and the importance of individuality. A human film, with no gender or orientation.

All these wonderful actors were ready to plunge into countless hours of rehearsal with me, to question each of my scenes and rewrite them with me. They were also ready to point out any incongruities with the queer universe and my heteronormative reflexes.

When I started preparing for this shoot, I was presenting myself as someone who wasn't part of the LGBTQIA2+ community. But I knew deep down that this statement was false. My problem wasn't an inability to come out — it was that I'd only been in relationships with cis men, so I'd enjoyed straight privilege all my life. My experiences had never been tainted by any form of homophobia or queerphobia. And I hadn't yet begun to deconstruct my heteronormative upbringing. So I didn't feel I had the right to label myself as queer.

But it was in making this film that I discovered myself.

Surrounding myself with queer folks in front of and behind the camera gave me a sense of meeting my own people, feeling like I belonged and, ultimately, experiencing a breakthrough similar to the character of Simon in the film: an understanding of who I am in my individuality. And I'd like to thank all the wonderful extras, my collaborators and above all, my loving actors, whom I affectionately call my "queer fairy godmothers," for opening the way for me.

We often tell ourselves that Solo has the power to change lives, even save some. It has already changed mine forever.

Solo screens at TIFF 2023 on Monday, September 11 at 3:30pm.