Drifting States

Les états nordiques

Canada

2005

91 Min

Color

1.66:1

French

Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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PROD Denis Côté, Stéphane Morissette

SCR Denis Côté, Christian LeBlanc

CAST Christian LeBlanc, Radisson's Citizen

Christian has committed a crime, a crime of compassion. A troubled soul, he must now flee not only the law, but the deep ethical consequences of his act. The path he sets upon leads him to where all roads end: a small community by the name of Radisson, 1500km north of Montreal. Slowly, he starts his life anew, among his new neighbors, a new job, a new interest in life. His story drifts along between fiction and reality…

Director

Denis Côté

Denis Côté (November 16, 1973 in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick in Canada) is a filmmaker and producer in Quebec, home Brayonne. Independent filmmaker, he is often considered one of the leaders of the new Quebec cinema, terms for his part he denies.

Cinephile, he studied cinema at Ahuntsic College in Montreal and founded nihilproductions (not to be confused with Aes-Nihil Productions) around 1994. Very active, he turns fifteen short films, including Kosovolove (2000) and La sphatte (2003). Meanwhile, he is a journalist in radio theater, cinema desk editor for the weekly Montreal cultural ICI from 1999 to 2005 and vice president of the Quebec Association of Film Critics (AQCC).

In 2005, his first feature, Drifting States, won the Golden Leopard (video) at the Locarno International Film Festival and the Grand Prix Indie Vision International Festival Jeonju, Korea. In November 2007, the film is one of ten selected by the Cahiers du Cinema in programming A Weekend of unpublished… read more

Shot in Bulgarian language, Our Private Lives (2007) has toured the international festival circuit.

His third feature film, All that She Wants, won the Award for Best Director at the 61st Locarno Film Festival and Best Canadian Film at the International Francophone Film Festival in Acadie. Jean-Michel Frodon, then editor of Les Cahiers du Cinéma, choose the movie as one of his 10 choices for Best movies of 2008.

In October 2008, his work is the subject of a retrospective at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

Born of an artist residency, Carcasses was presented to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival at the Directors’ Fortnight in May 2009. Presented at the Toronto International Film Festival, he was part of Canada’s Top Ten.

FTA in May 2010, Côté will be responsible for achieving the video of the play directed by Ash Jeremiah Niel (from Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi).

In 2010, the short film The enemy lines (43 min.) was a part of the Jeonju Digital Project Jeonju International Film Festival (Korea) where he premiered mondiale.
In August 2010, his new feature film Curling is presented in official competition at the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland). He won the award for directing, in addition to the Leopard for Best Actor goes to Emmanuel Bilodeau.

In late October, early November 2010, the Viennale presented a retrospective of his work. In addition to his own films, Denis Côté Product Rafael Ouellet Cedar examined in 2007. —Wikipedia

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msmichel

15Apr13

Cote's directorial debut owes a fair amount to the heritage of 'direct cinema' from Quebecois filmmakers like Lefebvre, Brault and Perrault. The film itself lies along a fine line of existential and docu-drama. The genesis of what we have seen since in the work of Cote is definately on display here.The remoteness and vastness of this country is well captured with a rare view of northern Quebec and the James Bay area.

Pál

6Mar13

The feeling of an étude taken into account, it was quite nicely put together, I guess the most important part being to have found and explored the location. Even before arriving to Radisson, an appalling ambiance was created with the machine beeping with the mother's heartbeat. The classroom scenes were unexpected. All in all, it was interesting as an experiment.