Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1Mon oncle Antoine (1971)Mon oncle Antoine (1971) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased Nov 12, 1971The starting point. Claude Jutra sets it in a small asbestos-mining town on Christmas Eve, seen through a teenage boy who helps out at his uncle's general store, which doubles as the undertaker's. A quarrel with an English-speaking foreman at the mine tells you everything about who held power in…0
  2. 2Orders (1974)Orders (1974) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 27, 1974Les Ordres During the October Crisis of 1970, martial law came to Quebec and ordinary people were jailed for weeks without charge. Michel Brault, one of the great documentary cameramen, tells their story as a docudrama, switching between color and black and white so you stop being sure where…0
  3. 3Good Riddance (1980)Good Riddance (1980) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased Feb 28, 1980Les Bons Débarras A 13-year-old girl in an isolated corner of rural Quebec wants her mother entirely to herself, and she will wreck anything that gets in the way. Charlotte Laurier plays Manon with a cold, clever stare that makes her both frightening and heartbreaking, opposite Marie Tifo as the…0
  4. 4The Dog Who Stopped the War (1984)The Dog Who Stopped the War (1984) 7.5/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 3, 1984La Guerre des tuques Ask almost anyone who grew up in Quebec about this one. Two gangs of village kids spend their winter break fighting a war game armed with snowballs, shields and wooden swords, with an extraordinary ice fortress as the prize, and the game slowly gets more serious than any of…0
  5. 5The Decline of the American Empire (1986)The Decline of the American Empire (1986) 7.1/10 on IMDbReleased Jun 19, 1986Le Déclin de l'empire américain Four Montreal university teachers gather at a rambling country house to cook dinner, and the conversation turns quickly to sex, affairs and getting older. Denys Arcand's comedy is almost all talk, and the talk is the pleasure: smart, vain, very funny people saying…0
  6. 6Jesus of Montreal (1989)Jesus of Montreal (1989) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased May 15, 1989Jésus de Montréal A troupe of actors puts on a fresh, interpretive Passion play in Montreal, and their version is so alive that the Catholic Church starts to push back. As the production grows, the actors find their roles leaking into their private lives. Arcand uses the setup to needle the…0
  7. 7Léolo (1992)Léolo (1992) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 16, 1992A 12-year-old in working-class Montreal decides he cannot possibly belong to his family and invents a far more exotic origin involving a Sicilian tomato. Jean-Claude Lauzon turns that fantasy into a surreal, half-autobiographical film that is by turns grotesque, lyrical and painfully funny. It is…0
  8. 8The Barbarian Invasions (2003)The Barbarian Invasions (2003) 7.5/10 on IMDbReleased May 1, 2003Les Invasions barbares Rémy, one of the professors from The Decline of the American Empire, is dying of cancer, and his ex-wife calls their estranged son, a successful businessman in London, home to help. Old friends and old lovers gather around him. It is a comedy about death that earns its…0
  9. 9Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003)Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003) 7.3/10 on IMDbReleased May 20, 2003La Grande Séduction A struggling fishing village can land a factory only if it has a full-time doctor, so when a Montreal physician is pressured into spending a month there, the whole town sets out to convince him he has found paradise. This is the warmest crowd-pleaser on the list, and its…0
  10. 10C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) 7.8/10 on IMDbReleased May 27, 2005If you see one film from this list, make it this one. Zach is the second-youngest of five brothers in a Montreal family during the Quiet Revolution, the 1960s and 1970s break with church-run Quebec, and he is gay in a house where his father's approval is everything. Jean-Marc Vallée tells it with…0