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Squeezed between his lavishly received, Sundance preemed docu-portrait of zoo life in Bestiaire, and Joy of Man’s Desiring, a genre blending meditation on factory work which had its debut at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Canadian auteur Denis Côté took home the Alfred Bauer Award from the Berlinale last year for his latest work of intricately haunting fiction, Vic + Flo Saw A Bear. It seems the stark visual sense found in Côté’s documentary work has carried over to his latest narrative. Squarely framed against spare backdrops within the rural cabin they’ve shacked up in, Pierrette Robitaille and Romane Bohringer, who play middle-aged lesbian ex-con couple Vic and Flo, respectively, are trying their hand at the monotony of a normal life, but sooner than later they swiftly find that they can not for all their efforts escape the horrors of one’s past.

Côté’s interests lie...

In a year that saw François Delisle’s Le météore (Sundance and Berlin Film Festival accepted film) receive no love (zero nominations), and Denis Côté’s critically well-received Vic + Flo Saw a Bear was perhaps too askew for the voting clique (it did grab best Actress for Quebec’s “Melissa Leo” in Pierrette Robitaille), it was a bigger than life biopic by helmer Daniel Roby that flexed its muscles, beating out the comp. The high gloss Louis Cyr won in several tech categories and it’s strongman Antoine Bertrand won for Best Actor. Considered the favorite to win the top prize, Gabrielle was awarded the Best Director and Screenplay awards for Louise Archambault. Oddly, that film received no Best Actress consideration while it did net Gabrielle Marion-Rivard a Best Actress win at Canadian Screen Awards. Here are the noms and winners of the 16th edition.

Best Film

Catimini

Le démantèlement...

With the dust fully settled on the Academy Awards, we point our attention northward with tonight’s 2014 Canadian Screen Awards. Many of the television winners have already been announced in glitzy fashion during this Canadian Screen Week, but with baited breath, we’re more keen on seeing how the film award honors will pan out. Last year’s Tiff saw Denis Villeneuve bring not one (Prisoners), but a pair of feature films and it is the offbeat, doppelgänger delight Enemy that should reap in the top awards of the evening. Here are my predictions of who will win, who should win, and who should have been nominated in each of the most anticipated film categories.

Best Motion Picture:

The nominees are: Enemy, The Dismantlement, Empire of Dirt, The F Word, Gabrielle, The Grand Seduction, Maina, Tom at the Farm

Screenie voters tend to favor Canada’s yearly submission for the...

Pierrette Robitaille and Romane Bohringer in Vic + Flo Saw A Bear Denis Côté's Vic + Flo Saw A Bear tells the story of ex-con Victoria's (Pierrette Robitaille) attempts to retreat from the dangers she perceives in the world, only to find that the past of her lesbian lover Florence (Romane Bohringer) holds an even greater world of threat. The film opens in at Anthology Film Archives in New York on February 7 and ahead of the release we caught up with Côté to chat about its shifting tones, strong subject matter - and why his films talk about the director himself.

Your films frequently contain very striking female characters - and in the case of Vic + Flo Saw A Bear there are three of them, with the men falling firmly in their shadow. Could you tell us a bit about that choice? Do you think that female protagonists offer you more scope than male ones?...

The tendency of violence to beget more violence has been the concern of artists since long before Aeschylus wrote about Orestes, who killed his mother for killing his father for killing his sister. Quebec–based Denis Côté's brutal fable Vic + Flo Saw a Bear is similarly preoccupied by violence's terrible fecundity, and this exceptional French-language film's strongest elements are borrowed from Greek tragedy. It's an ominous, claustrophobic, unhappily sapphic work whose thunderclap of a climax instills terror and awe of the fates' petty, whimsical cruelties.

Vic and Flo are Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille) and Florence (Romane Bohringer), a lesbian couple reunited after 61-year-old Vic's release from jail. (Her crime is never revealed, but she receiv...

For years Denis Côté has been delivering awkward, troubling dramas. His snow peppered landscapes are apt metaphors for his films which often hide difficult themes just below the surface but with Vic + Flo Saw a Bear Côté has not only moved away from the snowy landscapes but also delivered his most accessible movie yet.

Pierrette Robitaille star as Vic, a fifty something ex-con recently released from prison. We never find out why she was in there, only that she was incarcerated long enough that she's not used to the fast paced city life. She retreats to the Quebec countryside to live with her Uncle who is paralyzed and incapable of taking care of himself but who is cared for by the neighbour's teenage son.

Upon arrival, Vic makes it quickly known that [Continued ...]...

★★★☆☆ Winner of the Silver Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival, arch provocateur Denis Cote's Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013) is a fascinating experiment in genre and narrative expectation. Elevated by sterling composition and framing, it's a playful, intelligent work in which the formal elegance conceals its prankster ambitions. Though many will be repelled by the blatant traces of the technical cogs at work, adventurous cinephiles will find it a tricksy, unexpected delight. Provided viewers make the necessary leap of faith, its twists and turns will keep them on their toes throughout the film's lean running time.

We're introduced to the titular Vic (Pierrette Robitaille) as she moves to a remote part of the Canadian woods to care for her ailing father, much to the chagrin of the locals who have been looking after him for years. The situation is further complicated by the arrival of Vic's younger, more outgoing...

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A film called Vic and Flo Saw a Bear follows French actresses Pierrette Robitaille and Romane Bohringer as lovers who are also ex-convicts. The drama follows the women as they are released from prison and attempt to live normal lives, despite the presence of parole officers. It won the Alfred Bauer Prize at Berlinale this week, and sounds like it might have a bit of comedy to it, despite being referred to as melodramatic.

On Friday's episode of Portlandia, both Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen fall in love with and start dating their roommate, played by Chloe Sevigny. What you really need to know about this is that Carrie and Chloe make out. Thank you, IFC. Thank you.

So apparently Patti Stanger (aka The Millionaire Matchmaker) was once "a lesbian for a year.

Berlin 2013: Best Director David Gordon Green This year's Best Director at the Berlinale was David Gordon Green for Prince Avalanche, featuring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as two quite disparate road workers who develop an unlikely friendship. Green also wrote the Prince Avalanche screenplay, from an original story by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson. (Pictured above: David Gordon Green.) Best Actress Paulina Garcia Best Actress winner Paulina Garcia (pictured above holding her Silver Bear) is the star of Sebastián Lelio's dramatic comedy Gloria, which follows a middle-aged woman who rediscovers love in the person of a naval officer in his mid-60s. Roadside Attractions will handle the distribution of the well-liked Gloria in the U.S. Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi receives award The Best Screenplay prize went to Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovi for the narrative drama Closed Curtain. While accepting the award, Partovi told the audience that...

★★☆☆☆ Denis Côté's Vic and Flo Saw a Bear ( Vic et Flo ont vu un ours, 2013) is the follow-up to the experimental French Canadian director's zoo doc, Bestiaire (2012). A detached and ultimately soulless portrayal of the rehabilitating limbo of post-prison reintegration, Côté's offbeat and darkly comic drama is a near-impenetrable enigma of a film. We meet Vic (Pierrette Robitaille) as she arrives at an isolated bus stop, where she encounters two young boys, one of whom plays her an off-tune rendition of Farrah Shamek on his shabby-looking trumpet. She refuses to pay him anything for his rotten performance, yet the boys can't quite understand why.

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Montreal-based filmmaker Denis Côté's work is always both cryptic and heavy with meaning, but his latest narrative feature, "Vic and Flo Saw a Bear," stands out because at first it seems deceptively simple. From the purely avant-garde "Bestiare" to the restrained father-and-daughter portrait "Curling," Côté's movies invite viewers to search for clues to his motives. "Vic and Flo" is no exception and it takes a long time getting there. Sharply drawn characters and fine-tuned performances follow a meandering trajectory that finally upends expectations at the very end. Côté puts viewers at ease before throwing them off. That's not to say, that "Vic and Flo" entirely obscures its eccentric intentions. In the first shot, newly released 61-year-old prison convict Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille) arrives at the isolated countryside where she will live with her catatonic uncle. There,...

Vic & Flo ont vu un ours

Director/Writer: Denis Côté

Producer(s): Metafilms’ Sylvain Corbeil, Stéphanie Morissette (Camion)

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Marc-André Grondin, Romane Bohringer, Marie Brassard, Pierrette Robitaille

Ever since his docu-like essay in 2005′s Les états nordiques, Denis Côté has treated us to a body of minimalist work that defies classification with his last item Bestiaire (Sundance, Tiff) best exemplifying his preference for unique observational points and for fringe characters (this case it’s animals, but his other films are populated with the exotic of the human kind). While his 7th film is looking to be his most accessible yet (in the realms of Curling), which comparatively means its still counter-flow to the norm, this will surely have dna from his previous films (offbeat characters enclosed in natural spaces).

Gist: This is the portrait of two recently released prisoners (Pierrette Robitaille and Romane Bohringer...

Life as a filmmaker might have became a hell of a lot easier for Denis Côté especially when the French-Canadian auteur broke into a more "user-friendly" cinema with his Locarno winning Curling (Best Director). With more "flexibility", his 6th film titled Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (English translation Vic and Flo Saw a Bear) is set to go into production for next summer (means we shouldn't be seeing the final product until 2013) and he'll get to employ some bigger name talent. Actress/filmmaker Valérie Donzelli (whose La Guerre est déclarée is France's Oscar bet this year) and Marc-André Grondin whose had a healthy career so far in both Quebec and France since his breakout role in C.R.A.Z.Y. have signed on. Gist: Victoria Champagne (Pierrette Robitaille) is released from prison. Installed in a sugar shack in the woods, every week she must report her actions to parole officer (Marc-André Grondin...

The nominations for the 26th Gémeaux Awards, Quebec's equivalent of the Emmy Awards, have been revealed today.

1. Best dramatic TV series:

* 19-2.

* Les rescapés.

* Malenfant.

* Prozac, La Maladie Du Bonheur.

2. Best soap opera:

* Destinées.

* La promesse.

* Providence.

* Yamaska.

3. Best comedy series:

* La galère.

* Les Parent.

* Mauvais Karma.

* Penthouse 5-0.

* Tout sur moi.

4. Best actor in a dramatic TV series:

* Claude Legault in 19-2.

* Réal Bossé in 19-2.

* Roy Dupuis in Les rescapés.

* Luc Picard in Malenfant.

* Éric Bruneau in Toute la vérité.

5. Best actress in a dramatic TV series:

* Maude Guérin in Belle-Baie.

* Guylaine Tremblay in Les rescapés.

* Julie McClemens in Malenfant.

* Isabelle Blais in Prozac, la maladie du bonheur.

* Maude Guérin in Toute la vérité.

6. Best actor in a soap opera:

* Sébastien Delorme in La promesse.

* Bernard Fortin in Providence.

* Hugo Dubé in Providence.

* Normand d'Amour in Yamasca.

* Denis Bernard in Yamaska.

7. Best actress in a soap opera:

* Marie-Chantal Perron in Destinées.

Production on the upcoming film Le sens de l'humour has been over since last month. While no trailer isn't available, we've got a visit on the set of this film. Moreover, Le sens de l'humour will be released in Quebec on July 8, 2011.

This film is the second collaboration between Michel Côté, Louis-José Houde and director Émile Gaudreault. In fact, we remember them for having worked together on the comedy De père en flic, which holds the box office record for the most profitable Canadian film in Canada (not the world, mind you) with $11 million.

The story follows two comedians who decide to work together. Needless to say that these two guys will have success. One day, they make fun of a member of the audience. However, that person turns out to be a serial killer.

Finally, the film also stars Anne Dorval, Pierrette Robitaille, Benoît Brière, Zaccari-Charles Jobin, Luc Senay,...

Alliance Vivafilm, a Canadian distributor, has released the first poster of the upcoming comedy Le sens de l'humour. While it is currently in production, the film will be released in Quebec on July 8, 2011.

First of all, director Émile Gaudreault, actor Michel Côté and comedian Louis-José Houde team up for a second time after the success of De père en flic, the highest-grossing Canadian film of all time.

The story follows two comedians who decide to work together. Needless to say that these two guys will have success. One day, they make fun of a member of the audience. However, that person turns out to be a serial killer.

Finally, the film also stars Anne Dorval, Pierrette Robitaille, Benoît Brière, Zaccari-Charles Jobin, Luc Senay, Pierre Collin, Marilyse Bourke, Alexandre Goyette, Sonia Vachon, René Richard Cyr and Éveline Gélinas.