The Directors' Fortnight is an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festival as an act of solidarity with striking workers.
Days of Darkness, also known as The Age of Ignorance, is a 2007 black comedy-drama film written and directed by Denys Arcand and starring Marc Labrèche, Diane Kruger and Sylvie Léonard. Presented as the third part of Arcand's loose trilogy also consisting of The Decline of the American Empire (1986) and The Barbarian Invasions (2003), it was followed by a fourth film with similar themes, The Fall of the American Empire (2018). The film follows a depressed québecois bureaucrat who, feeling insignificant, retreats into a fantasy world.
Monia Chokri is a Canadian actress and filmmaker.
Trevor Anderson is a Canadian filmmaker and musician. His films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Jeffrey St. Jules is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, who won the Claude Jutra Award in 2015 for his debut feature film Bang Bang Baby. The film also won the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Julie Roy is a Canadian filmmaker and producer of animated films, who has been the head of Telefilm Canada since 2023. She was previously the executive producer of the French animation studio at the National Film Board from 2014 until her Telefilm appointment.
Jeremy LaLonde is a Canadian filmmaker. He is known for his work in Canadian film and television.
Johnny Ma is a Chinese-Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his debut feature film Old Stone, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2016. The film won the awards for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, and Best First Feature at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards in 2017. His second feature To Live To Sing premiered at the Director's Fortnight Section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Chloé Leriche is a Canadian film director from Montreal, Quebec. Her debut feature film, Before the Streets , received six Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards in 2017, including Best Picture and a nod for Leriche as Best Director.
The Tesla World Light is an 8-minute 2017 black and white avant-garde film by Montreal director Matthew Rankin imagining the latter days of inventor Nikola Tesla in 1905 in New York City. Rankin has stated that he was interested in exploring Tesla's optimistic utopian vision. The film is a fanciful amalgamation of elements from Tesla's life including his 1905 pleadings for J.P. Morgan to continue funding his World Wireless System and his love for a pigeon. Rankin has stated that "everything in the film is drawn from something [Tesla] wrote or said." The film uses excerpts of Tesla's actual letters to Morgan, which the filmmaker found in the Library of Congress; even a reference to Tesla falling in love with an "electric pigeon" was based on an interview with Tesla, according to Rankin. The film is produced by Julie Roy for the National Film Board of Canada.
Mynarski Death Plummet is a 2014 Canadian short film, written, produced, edited, animated, and directed by Matthew Rankin. Blending live action with animation, the film expressionistically imagines the final moments of Andrew Mynarski, a Canadian World War II airman who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for attempting to free colleague Pat Brophy before plummeting to his death from their burning airplane.
Jutra is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre and released in 2014. Blending live action with animation, the film is a portrait of influential Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra, structured as an interview in which Jutra is both the questioner and the interview guest.
Karl Raudsepp Hearne is a film director and screenwriter, whose feature directorial debut Touched premiered on the film festival circuit in 2017 before being released theatrically in 2018. His new feature "The G" starring Dale Dickey premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Glasgow and Munich Film Festivals and many others. He received a Special Jury Prize at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival for Best Director for his work on The G.
The Twentieth Century is a 2019 Canadian surrealist black comedy written and directed by Matthew Rankin in his full-length directorial debut. The film presents a fictionalized portrait of the rise to power of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as played by Dan Beirne. It won three Canadian Screen Awards.
Marie-Ève Juste is a Canadian film director from Quebec. Her 2012 short film With Jeff premiered in the Director's Fortnight at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and was a shortlisted Prix Jutra nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 15th Jutra Awards in 2013.
With Jeff is a Canadian drama film, directed by Marie-Ève Juste and released in 2012. The film stars Laury Verdieu as Nydia, a shy, quiet Haitian Canadian student leading a regimented and isolated life, who gains a taste of freedom when she accepts a motorcycle ride from her classmate Jeff.
In Flames is a 2023 Pakistani-Canadian supernatural horror drama film written, directed and co-edited by Zarrar Kahn in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Ramesha Nawal, Bakhtawar Mazhar, Adnan Shah Tipu, Mohammad Ali Hashmi and Omar Javaid.
The Queen of My Dreams is a 2023 Canadian comedy drama film, written and directed by Fawzia Mirza in her feature directorial debut. The film is based on Mirza's theatrical stage play Me, My Mom & Sharmila, which in turn was based on her 2012 short film The Queen of My Dreams.The film stars Amrit Kaur as Azra, a Pakistani Canadian woman who has had a strained relationship with her parents since coming out as lesbian, who undergoes an emotional journey after the sudden unexpected death of her father Hassan.
Universal Language is a 2024 Canadian absurdist comedy-drama film, co-written and directed by Matthew Rankin. It was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.
