Évènement à venir
- FOCUS-DOCU #2: The ethics of looking - December 2, 2025 - 6 pm - 8 pm
- Meet the Film Factory residents (2023-2024) - December 15, 2025 - 6 pm - 9 pm
- Roundtable : First feature documentaries - December 8, 2025 - 6 pm - 9 pm
2
Dec
FOCUS-DOCU #2: The ethics of looking
Meetup - Documentary Cinema - Fall 2025
Date / Heure
2 December 2025
6 pm - 8 pm
Lieu
Main Film Atelier
2025 Rue Parthenais #304-A, Montréal, Quebec, H2K 3T2
Guests | Khoa Lê (Ma Sài Gòn), Lamia Chraibi (Circo), and Léa Clermont-Dion (La peur au ventre)
More guests to be announced soon!
Free upon registration
As part of its documentary series, Main Film presents FOCUS-DOCU: a series of meetings taking place on the first Thursday of every month this fall! These panels will focus on the multiple potentials and challenges of documentary cinema today.
Looking is in itself a political act. This round table discussion will examine the ethical responsibility of documentary filmmakers: filming trauma, entering into intimate spaces, negotiating consent, etc. How can we avoid reifying or exoticizing the subjects we film? This conversation will bring together filmmakers and programmers to explore a more conscious approach to documentary filmmaking.
For more information, please send an email to: services@mainfilm.qc.ca
Khoa Lê is a filmmaker, director, video designer, and author of feature films, documentaries, essays, video installations, music videos, magazines, and commercials. Through his artistic creations, he seeks to blur the boundaries between the sacred, the mundane, the real, and the imaginary. His quest for artistic freedom and his desire to expose creative gestures drive him to transcend formal boundaries.
Ma Sài Gòn (2023): Ma Sài Gòn questions the place of documentary filmmaking in the private lives of marginalized communities, avoiding exoticization and adopting a respectful and participatory stance. It raises questions about the ethical representation of queer identity in a complex cultural context.
Sarah Seené is a Montreal-based photographer and filmmaker whose analog photography work reflects a feminist and anti-validist approach. Through a poetic aesthetic, she explores themes related to chronic pain, mental health, and disability.
Her work has been presented at numerous festivals and exhibitions in Quebec and internationally. Her award-winning short films include Orbites (2025), which won an award at the REGARD festival, and Lumen, which has been acclaimed at various international festivals. She also collaborates with artists from the Quebec music scene.
Orbites (2025) : Because she lost her sight a few years ago, Marie-Christine explores life in a sensitive way, through the tips of her fingers. Through her personal experience, she awakens her son’s curiosity and wonder at the beauty of the universe. Bringing together a constellation of textured analog images and a bouquet of caressing soundscapes, Orbites embodies a dive into Marie-Christine’s sensory memory and reflects on the fundamental aspects of love and transmission.
Laurence Turcotte-Fraser is a Montreal-based filmmaker and cinematographer who combines a documentary eye with a fictional sensibility. President of Fraser Films Inc., she has directed two acclaimed feature-length documentaries: The End of Wonderland (2021 – IDFA, RIDM, BFI Flare) and Ma cité évincée (2023 – Jean-Marc-Vallée Award, cited at the National Assembly).
A sought-after cinematographer, she has notably worked on 004Angel (Regard 2025) and Dorchester, au cœur de la mêlée (CBC/Radio-Canada). Her dual practice feeds into a distinctive visual approach rooted in direct cinema.
With Le petit CHAOS (co-directed with Émilie L. Côté), she returns to short fiction, exploring contemporary anxiety with a distinctly Quebecois darkness. Laurence is currently developing several projects that continue her quest for human truth, whether intimate or political.
Ma Cité Évincée (2023) : As Quebec experiences an unprecedented housing crisis, “Ma cité évincée” gives a voice to those who are feeling the effects of real estate speculation in Montreal, one of the last affordable major cities in North America. But for how much longer?
15
Dec
Meet the Film Factory residents (2023-2024)
Meetup, Rencontre - Documentary Cinema - Fall 2025
Date / Heure
15 December 2025
6 pm - 9 pm
Lieu
Main Film Atelier
2025 Rue Parthenais #304-A, Montréal, Quebec, H2K 3T2
Guests | Irina Tempea (Bica), Yen-Chao Lin (Invisible Landscape), and Chantal Partamian (Adumbration)
Free upon registration
Come and meet the three artists selected for the 2023-2024 Film Factory, supported by Main Film as part of a one-year residency dedicated to research or production in experimental cinema. From submitting their applications to screening their works at various festivals, through their phases of creative exploration, they will share the major milestones of their journey as well as the concrete benefits of this residency.
This is an excellent opportunity for those considering submitting a project to the 2025-2026 edition of the Manufacture de Films!
This exchange will provide a better understanding of how the program works, but also open up a space for dialogue around the projects in progress, the experiences, the challenges, the highlights, and the experimentation processes specific to each resident.
Deadline for the next application: January 20, 2025
For more information, please send an email to: services@mainfilm.qc.ca
Irina Tempea
Irina Tempea is a filmmaker and cultural worker of Romanian origin based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her artistic practice, which resembles a personal diary, revolves around the analog process she uses to reveal herself. In doing so, she questions the materiality of film while filming her daily life and loved ones. She has just completed her first short film, Dans ma tête, which deals with her multiple sclerosis. Irina holds a bachelor’s degree in film studies from the University of Montreal. She now wishes to open up a dialogue with other cinematographic devices in order to bring them together in a second work.
About Bica :
Bica is an experimental short film about my Romanian origins. In the research phase, my project focuses on exploring my Romanian identity as a second-generation immigrant, highlighting the links between the landscape, textures, colors, and memories associated with my grandmother. This approach aims to reveal the facets of my cultural heritage, while exploring how these visual and sensory elements have shaped my perception of the world. This exploration of identity will be done through my grandmother’s eyes and through the exploration of the texture and colors associated with the territory. Bica is actually the diminutive of bunica, which means grandmother in Romanian.
Yen-Chao Lin
Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭 is a multidisciplinary artist born in Taipei and based in Montreal. Having grown up in a multi-faith family, she is interested in religion, spirituality, divination arts, dowsing, occult sciences, alchemy, Feng Shui, oral tradition, and power—anything that can be perceived but not necessarily seen. Passionate about natural history and an avid collector, Yen-Chao gathers specimens of mineral, botanical, animal, and industrial origin, including objects that bear witness to the recent or distant past and have a story to tell. Through intuitive play, collaboration, salvaging, and collecting, her tactile practice often incorporates various craft techniques, such as copper enameling, ceramics, textiles, and gilding, to create installations, sculptures, and experimental films.
About Invisible Landscape :
Invisible Landscape is the production of a short film about Taiwanese Taoist folk religion with a particular focus on Feng Shui, exploring the invisible ways in which popular beliefs shape collective culture and personal identity. It is an experimental landscape film that uses the organic texture of the cinematic form to support its complex, varied, and vibrant folkloric content, capturing the unique symbiotic relationship of Taoist folk beliefs in contemporary Taiwan.
Chantal Partamian
Chantal Partamian is an experimental filmmaker and archivist specializing in Super 8 mm film and archival footage. Her films, which have been recognized and awarded at numerous festivals, are distributed by Vidéographe, the Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. As an archivist, Chantal Partamian specializes in the conservation and restoration of film reels from the eastern Mediterranean as part of the Katsakh Mediterranean Archives project, while conducting research on archival practices in conflict zones. Her writings are mainly published in the journal Hors-Champ. Chantal Partamian’s work spans both the artistic and archival fields, merging experimental cinema and preservation efforts aimed at safeguarding the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean region.
About Adumbration :
In 1989, only an intercine moviola survived an explosion in my father’s film studios. In this Lovecraftian Beirut, the machine has been attempting to turn back time ever since, in an effort to shed light on the moment of the catastrophe and find a solution to the ultimate evil that looms over the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a graveyard sea that holds deep within it the ultimate book, the Necronomicon, written by AlHazred, the mad scientist who disappeared in Damascus centuries ago.
8
Dec
Roundtable : First feature documentaries
Meetup - Documentary Cinema - Fall 2025
Date / Heure
8 December 2025
6 pm - 9 pm
Lieu
Main Film Atelier
2025 Rue Parthenais #304-A, Montréal, Quebec, H2K 3T2
Guests | Vincent Toi (Séga : la musique de l’océan Indien), Shahab Mihandoust (Meezan), and Yann-Manuel Hernandez (Tout sur Margo)
Free upon registration
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to attend a meeting with several experienced documentary filmmakers who will share their visions and experiences around a decisive stage in the career of any director: the creation of their first feature-length documentary. 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-length documentary 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
A Main Film #MainArtist, Vincent Toi is a Mauritian-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. Born in Mauritius, his work explores the lasting effects of colonialism by examining the power structures that continue to shape postcolonial and diasporic communities.
Through cinema, Vincent seeks to build bridges between cultures and histories, creating narratives that are both intimate and politically engaged. His films have been screened at major international festivals, including the Berlinale, the Toronto International Film Festival, Hot Docs, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and have been praised for their seamless blend of fiction and documentary as well as their poetic and incisive storytelling.
About Séga, la musique de l’océan Indien
Séga is a musical documentary that follows a young Mauritian musician on her journey to rediscover her Creole identity through sega, the traditional music of the Indian Ocean.
Born in Guatemala and based in Montreal, Quebec, Yann-Manuel Hernandez is a filmmaker and cinematographer known for his bold and innovative works that blur the line between fiction and documentary. In 2016, he co-founded Les mains sales films, a company dedicated to hybrid and experimental cinema. His films explore themes of identity, memory, and trauma, and have been acclaimed at international festivals such as Fantasia, Dresden, and RIDM. His first feature film, Déserts, opened the Nouveaux Alchimistes section of the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in 2016, while his latest film, Tout sur Margo, was selected for the official competition at RIDM 2024. He is currently developing Les ombres du volcan, winner of an award at DOCLAB RIDM 2024 and selected for SODEC Création émergente.
About Tout sur Margo :
Margo, a somewhat lost actress, leaves her routine in Paris to shoot a film in Portugal. As she seeks to embody her character in fiction, she gradually finds the true path to herself. Tout sur Margo takes a touching look at a young woman, Margo, who is going through a period of personal and spiritual transformation. Shot in the style of a documentary and borrowing heavily from cinéma vérité, this hybrid film explores the theme of authenticity in a friendship between a man and a woman, presented here as a possible salvation for its protagonists.
Shahab Mihandoust is a documentary filmmaker based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. His work is inspired by ethnographic approaches to filmmaking and focuses on the everyday practices that shape relationships between people and places. Shahab holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a specialization in film production from Concordia University. His first feature-length documentary, Meezan (Scale), premiered at the RIDM in 2023.
About de Meezan :
Khuzestan, located in southwestern Iran, is a landscape marked by numerous scars. Accumulated throughout its history of colonization, industrialization, revolution, and war, these scars define a place steeped in its past. In Meezan, the memory of this Iranian province, where conflicts and wars linked to oil in particular have arisen, is approached through the perspective of the workers. In three parts, the manual labor of workers in maritime-related tasks and professions comes together to create a polyphony of movements, sounds, and colors with the aim of creating a sensory conversation, questioning the physical relationship of a population that inhabits a place steeped in the history that defines it despite itself.