19 Feb Roundtable: First feature films
19
Feb
Roundtable: First feature films
Meetup, Rencontre - Fiction - Winter 2026
Thursday February 19, 2026
6 pm - 9 pm
Main Film Atelier
2025 Rue Parthenais #304-A, Montréal, Quebec, H2K 3T2
Guests | Marie Brassard (Le train), Chloé Cinq-Mars (Peau à peau), Laetitia Demessence (Oraison) and Marianne Métivier (Ailleurs la nuit)
Free upon registration
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to attend a meeting with several experienced filmmakers who will share their visions and experiences around a decisive stage in the career of any director: the creation of their first feature film. During this discussion, the speakers will address the main challenges encountered at this crucial stage, from writing the film to organizing the shoot, including production preparation and distribution strategies. Making a first feature film involves artistic, logistical, and human choices that are often complex and sometimes unexpected.
For more information, please send an email to: services@mainfilm.qc.ca
Marie Brassard
Marie Brassard is an actress, author, and director. In 2001, she began her solo career by founding her production company, Infrarouge, where she serves as artistic director. Working closely with musicians and visual artists, she creates shows with surreal atmospheres where video, light, and sound play a central role. Intertwining voices and music, crossing levels of reality, her productions take us to a place where the boundary between private and public blurs and the relationship between human beings and technology becomes intimate. Her unique work, which combines art and technology, has made her a singular voice in the contemporary theater landscape. Her plays have been presented and warmly received in some twenty countries in America and Europe, as well as in Japan and Australia. Her interest in projects related to augmented and virtual reality continues to grow. She occasionally works with choreographers and sometimes acts in films. She is currently finishing the screenplay for her first feature film. In 2016, she was awarded the Ordre des arts et des Lettres du Québec, an honorary distinction recognizing her outstanding contribution to the Quebec arts community.
Quebec, 1960s. Agathe, a child with asthma, lives with her mother Thérèse (Larissa Corriveau), a melancholic artist. At night, the recurring sound of a train whistle fuels her vision of a parallel world where travelers from the future pass through. As a teenager, Agathe meets Frank (Lennikim), a young writer who will help her cross the border between the present and the future.
Chloé Cinq-Mars
Films written or directed by Chloé Cinq-Mars have been screened at over 300 international festivals. In 2018, she wrote the screenplay for Dérive, a feature film directed by her long-time collaborator David Uloth. She received a Gala Québec Cinéma nomination for Best Casting for this film. Chloé also directed La Coupure (Best Quebec Short Film at Longue vue sur le court in 2020, Best Short Film at 20 MinMax in Germany, Best International Short at the St. Louis International Film Festival in the United States, etc.). Chloé is also a screenwriting consultant for authors at L’inis and as part of international initiatives such as Atelier Grand Nord and Jeune Création Francophone. She recently completed post-production on her first feature film as a director: Peau à Peau, a psychological thriller about motherhood.
About Peau à peau :
A young woman suffering from insomnia and her baby witness a robbery in a convenience store. The event brings back painful memories for the mother, who gradually loses touch with reality, to the point of endangering her child.
Laetitia Demessence
Laetitia Demessence is a French-Spanish director and screenwriter who grew up in Spain, Indonesia, and Chile before moving to Quebec to study film at the University of Montreal. After completing her studies, she explored filmmaking through various short film and dance film projects. She then graduated from the 2021-2022 Feature Film Writing program at INIS, where she developed her first feature-length fiction film, for which she received the Louise Spickler Excellence Scholarship. Laetitia recently completed her first feature film, entitled Oraison. It is funded by Telefilm Canada’s Talents en vue program and the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec.
About Oraison :
Leonor joins a contemporary dance company to unravel the mystery of Oraison, a legendary piece performed by her mother thirty years ago, in the hope of understanding what broke her. She discovers a ritual in which every movement summons the ghosts of the past and reopens the wounds of a family line.
Marianne Métivier
Marianne Métivier is a Canadian-Filipina screenwriter and director from Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Her short film She Who Wears the Rain (2019) was selected at the Berlinale Shorts Competition in 2020. She is currently developing her first documentary Back Home for which she received a development grant at the Talent Lab of the Montreal International Documentary Festival in 2020. Her first fiction feature Elsewhere at Night (2025) was selected to participate to the FeatureLab 2023 of the Torino Film Lab and to the TIFF Filmmaker Lab in 2021, where she received the TIFF Worb Filmmaker Fellowship. Her work mainly explores the sense of belonging to places and our relationship to the intangible.
About Ailleurs la nuit :
A scorching summer stretches across the countryside and the city. In a lush landscape, Marie, a sound artist in search of inspiration, begins to question her relationship. The arrival of Noée, a young traveler, disrupts her routine and that of Yan, a solitary farmer next door. In the city, Eva, newly arrived from the Philippines, walks sleepless nights, caught between homes, while Jeanne, a master’s student, contemplates walking away from everything. As they go through moments of doubt and brief connections, their inner worlds quietly reflect one another. Linked by hopes and fears, they continue moving toward uncertainty.
Our fiction cycle continues all winter! See the full schedule here.