Together in the dark: Film lovers gather in Montreal for Canada's first critics' week

At Montreal's Cinémathèque Québécoise, January blizzards couldn't stop filmgoers from arriving early to secure seats for a triple bill of challenging, arthouse films. 

On Jan. 13, the opening night of the inaugural Montreal Critics' Week, energies ran high amongst a small festival team eager to greet their first audience. Box office representatives pored over guests lists for the week ahead, anticipating a string of sold-out screenings while deliberating what to do about the midweek pivot to the Cinéma Moderne, a much smaller venue that was co-hosting the festival. In line to get into the theatre, one attendee showed off the passport he purchased to access the full week of events: a handbound book, each one with a custom portrait drawn by artist Romy Surprenant. Nearby, a merch table sold posters, tote bags and bright yellow hats to gleeful cinephiles.  

Even as one of these gleeful cinephiles, I was as excited as I was daunted by a nightly program that boasted three to four hours of cerebral titles followed by extended, in-depth conversations between artists and critics. Modelled after the Berlin Critics' Week, which has run for 10 years as a counterpoint to the Berlin International Film Festival, programmers of the Montreal initiative — which would be the first-ever critics' week in Canada — were eager to revitalize an existing curatorial circuit that they saw as increasingly distracted from the art itself. 

"In Montreal, we have a lot of different film festivals. We're lucky in that regard," explained Montreal Critics' Week General Manager Mathieu Li-Goyette, while taking a quick break from welcoming guests. "At the same time, I get the feeling, having covered this landscape for years now, that we have less and less filmmakers in town, less and less interesting discussions, and the work and the filmmakers are less and less well framed. It's always the same kind of Q&As: very short, always the same questions. I asked myself if maybe we can take the formula that is working in Berlin and adapt it."

Opportunities to write critically about film in Canada have steadily dwindled over the past several years. Publications like cléo, Canadian Art and most recently Cinema Scope have progressively shuttered, reducing the availability of jobs for critics and material for readers wanting to engage with film. Further complicating the critical landscape has been the popularity of film cataloguing app Letterboxd, where in-depth critical reviews sit alongside fan odes and jokey one-liners written by users.

With the imposition of the pandemic, spaces to discuss cinema, namely festivals, have precariously adapted, putting an even tighter squeeze on venues for critical discourse. "Since COVID, there is a to-be-expected sort of austerity taking hold of cultural events," said director of programming Ariel Esteban Cayer. He noted that the fixation of festivals on big crowds, celebrity attendees and box office success runs counter to Canadian public funding models, where there should be a greater emphasis on discovery and support for local talent.  "Like, what is the actual function of these festivals? I think there's a bit of this capitalistic mindset that has kicked into hierarchy through COVID."

With all these pressures that have transformed the critical terrain, a critics' week draws a map for traversing it. Criticism — which can be viewed as a solitary, siloed and sometimes intellectually elite activity — becomes something experienced communally by an interested public audience that will hopefully grow for years to come. For the critics speaking at the screenings, the presence of an audience is a unique chance to glimpse how their ideas are received and understood in real time, turning their sometimes solitary sport into a conversation.  

By prioritizing smaller, unconventional films, the programmers of Montreal Critics' Week are as much responding to frustrations with the status quo as they are creating an opportunity to rigorously engage audiences. Countering big budget festival gloss, Li-Goyette described the upcoming week of films as "imperfect in the best way possible." And he hoped that audiences would remember — even after the festival had finished —  "that imperfection in filmmaking is good to preserve and care about, because with imperfection comes honesty."

Over the course of the week, audiences seemed to take this plea to heart, earnestly engaging with the raw and often experimental films programmed. During one of the panel discussions, I watched as an audience member thumbed through Letterboxd on her phone, looking up several obscure films mentioned by the speakers. On another night, the critics and moderator managed to include the entire theatre in the discussion and sustain their participation, creating a kind of conversational flow impossible at bigger festivals constrained by tight timelines, big stars and standardized formats.

While lengthy and demanding, the double- or triple-bill structure was a significant opportunity for filmmakers as well, who could draw connections to other artists on their program and experience the meaningful interrogation of their work after credits rolled. Nova Scotian director Winston DeGiobbi's Two Cuckolds Go Swimming — a narrative feature about a porn performer visiting her home in Cape Breton — had its world premiere at Critics' Week after being turned down for multiple years by other festivals. "It felt very fitting while I was there, especially seeing the film that preceded mine and the short film, which really set the tone," said DeGiobbi, who was "thrilled" to be screened alongside Park Sye-young's Twilight and Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy's documentary, A Man Imagined.

"It's very flattering," said Dennis Vetter, a co-director of Berlin Critics' Week who had come to town to support its Montreal offspring and moderate a panel. "I believe an event like this can show how criticism can be something very alive, contemporary, joyful [and] energetic, which can help us understand better what film culture actually is, because the films themselves can't exist in a vacuum. Any society which wants to sustain cinema as an art form needs to invest energy and also needs to invest financially into spaces which can connect the public with the filmmakers, with the critics who create a public discourse around the films and all those who are invested in the art form."

While a giant festival like TIFF can be expensive and inaccessible, Critics' Week was energized by a DIY, community energy fueled by its team. For a first-time festival, I was surprised by the high attendance figures of Critics' Week, where full houses could partially be attributed to passionate organizers and a close-knit, supportive network eager to see it succeed. 

At the same time, the appetite for this kind of experience seemed to be more broadly felt. Festivalgoers Olivier Boucher and Laurianne Beaudoin, young film buffs who had attended the previous night of screenings, chatted about their chances of getting last-minute tickets to Thursday's lineup over a drink at the Cinéma Moderne bar. They commended the diversity of the films on offer, particularly enjoying the opportunity to process what they viewed through the discussion that followed. 

If art events can sometimes feel affected and alienating, Critics' Week fostered a warmer vibe. "I like that it's small," mused Boucher, describing the ways that film festivals build intimacy amongst participants. "It's nice to see the same faces. It's more approachable." 

Boucher and Beaudoin were joined by their friend Charles-Olivier Villeneuve. "I've been going to film festivals in Montreal for years now, but in the last few, I've been kind of disappointed in the rest of the movie festivals around the city," Villeneuve said. "It's been a long time since I've been going to a cinema every day and [experiencing this] festival crunch."

When asked what made that kind of experience special, Villeneuve became contemplative. "It's the immersion," he said. "It's a different kind of way of engaging with the thing. Every program is riffing from each other. I don't know, it's a weird example maybe, but it's like a video game. Like this way of just getting through it, like every level, every stage. I don't know, it's like there's a satisfying …" he began to trail off before smiling. "I don't know if that sounds pretentious." It didn't. It sounded like a way to experience film that is both rare and worthwhile.