Évènement à venir
- FOCUS-DOCU #1: Cine-therapy and personal stories - October 2, 2025 - 6 pm - 9 pm
- FOCUS-DOCU #2: The ethics of looking - November 6, 2025 - 6 pm - 9 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
Oct
FOCUS-DOCU #1: Cine-therapy and personal stories
Meetup, Rencontre - Documentary Cinema - Fall 2025
Date / Heure
2 October 2025
6 pm - 9 pm
Lieu
Main Film Atelier
2025 Rue Parthenais #304-A, Montréal, Quebec, H2K 3T2
Guests | Kalina Bertin (Manic), Alex Anna (Scars), François Delisle (CHSLD)
Moderated by Marion Chuniaud
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.
For the first FOCUS-DOCU, we are bringing together artists who use documentary film as a space for personal exploration, a means of coping with inner crises or trauma, almost like a “talking cure” or even an “image cure.” How does the camera become a tool for storytelling, understanding, and healing? What are the limits and risks of this introspective approach? This discussion will bring together filmmakers whose works blend the intimate and the political, memory and resilience.
For more information, please send an email to: services@mainfilm.qc.ca
Kalina is a director, producer, and cinematographer. In 2017, she released her first feature-length documentary, MANIC, at the Hot Docs festival, where she won the Don Haig Pay it Forward Award. MANIC is then nominated by the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television for two Canadian Screen Awards, and wins an Iris Award at the Gala Québec Cinéma. Her first virtual reality work, ManicVR, premieres at the Sheffield Doc/Fest in England, and wins the prestigious Golden Nica Award at Ars Electronica in Austria. At the 34th edition of the Prix Gémeaux, she was nominated for the Special Emerging Artist Award, a tribute highlighting the innovation, creativity, and originality of an emerging artist. Kalina is currently working on her first feature-length fiction film, the writing of which was supported by SODEC, Telefilm Canada, and CALQ.
Manic (2017): Kalina Bertin investigates her bipolar father’s troubled life to understand the impact of mental illness on her siblings. This intimate journey pieces together a family puzzle marked by delusions, secrets, and suffering.
Queer and socially conscious filmmaker Alex Anna (she/they) is committed to telling the stories of voices that are too often silenced, and to connecting the personal with the universal. Her film Scars had its world premiere at TIFF and won over 30 awards, while Create; Survive was screened at DOC NYC.
Scars (2020): Alex Anna reveals her physical and emotional scars in a hybrid documentary where animation and live action recount her struggle with depression and self-harm. Her body becomes a living, poetic narrative of resilience.
Créer; Survivre (2024) : How can you continue to create when you are struggling to survive? Alex Anna presents her film Scars at festivals, but behind her apparent success lies an exhausting battle with her own mind. Blending poetry with the brutality of loneliness, Créer; Survivre confronts our virtual and public identities with the intimate reality of depression.
Born in Montreal in 1967, François Delisle began his career by directing several short films between 1987 and 1991. His first feature film, Ruth (1994), was enthusiastically received by critics and brought him recognition in Canada and Europe. In 2003, he founded the production company Films 53/12 and produced his second film, Le bonheur c’est une chanson triste (2004), which won several awards and international recognition. His subsequent films, Toi (2007) and 2 fois une femme (2010), enjoyed similar success. Le météore (2013) and Chorus (2015) were presented at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale, enjoying international acclaim both at festivals and during their theatrical releases in several countries. In 2019 and 2020, François Delisle directed Cash Nexus, his seventh feature film, followed by CHSLD, a short documentary about his mother in the twilight of her life. In 2025, Le temps was released in theaters: its form and content captivated critics and audiences alike, who welcomed the film with notable enthusiasm. For more than 30 years, François Delisle has explored the human condition through his personal, demanding, and uncompromising cinema.
CHSLD (2020): François Delisle paints an intimate portrait of his mother, a resident of a long-term care facility. It is a deep dive into the daily life and medical care of a woman at the end of her life, where respect, love, and dignity persist. He modestly captures the moments shared and the bonds forged until the final farewell. A meditative work on death, tenderness, and presence.
Moderator: Marion Chuniaud
Based between Montreal and Paris since 2015, she holds a degree in international and intercultural communication and has trained in film at the Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS). She collaborates on and makes a living from a variety of projects: films, dance videos, music videos, and corporate projects. As a content creator and communications project manager, she navigates between artistic and professional circles with ease. With several years of experience in business and then as a freelancer, she has developed expertise in network expansion, project presentation, fundraising, team building, collaborative strategy development, and keen observation of the world around her, both with her eyes and her heart. Her freelance reality constantly leads her to create new connections and maintain an active link between France, Quebec, and the international community.
6
Nov
FOCUS-DOCU #2: The ethics of looking
Meetup, Rencontre - Documentary Cinema - Fall 2025
Date / Heure
6 November 2025
6 pm - 9 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.
A #MainArtist of Main Film, Lamia Chraibi is a Franco-Moroccan filmmaker based in Montreal. She is particularly interested in themes of social justice, identity, family, and territory. She also explores topics related to body language and social art. Human beings are at the heart of her approach. Her studies in social sciences (Sorbonne, Paris) and documentary filmmaking (INIS, Montreal) have shaped her sensitive and committed view of the world. Her art is nourished by her questions about identity, her migratory journey, and her travels.
Lamia’s cinema is based on time and the trust she builds with her subjects. With a poetic approach, her camera gives a voice to forgotten people from diverse backgrounds.
Circo (2025): The film explores an ethical approach to viewing rooted in proximity and listening, without ever falling into miserabilism or appropriation. Through her immersive approach, the director questions how to film transition, trauma, and hope with sensitivity and respect for consent.
Léa Clermont-Dion is a filmmaker and postdoctoral research associate at Concordia University. She holds a PhD in political science from Laval University. Her research focuses on cyberviolence against women, women’s empowerment on social media, violence against women, and more. She received the Vanier Scholarship, one of the most prestigious doctoral scholarships in Canada. Léa has worked with the Conseil du statut de la femme, the Secrétariat à la condition féminine, and the Association Munyu des femmes de la Comoé, a partner of OXFAM in Burkina Faso. She has given over 200 presentations on women’s issues, including presentations to the Council of Europe. She has directed a dozen short films for Radio-Canada in Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Germany. She is the director of three documentaries: T’as juste à porter plainte (Noovo), Je vous salue salope : La misogynie au temps du numérique (La Ruelle Films), and Janette et filles (La Ruelle Films). She is also the author of three books: La revanche des moches (2014), Les Superbes (2016), and Crève avec moi (2019).
La peur au ventre (2025): By overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a fifty-year leap backward by ensuring that abortion is no longer a protected right. This setback is symptomatic of a disturbing polarization. Disturbed by this historic situation, filmmaker and feminist Léa Clermont-Dion asks: what effect will this legal setback have here? The documentary La peur au ventre explores the rise of anti-abortion groups in Canada. The mobilization is taking place here and now, in Quebec. Throughout the narrative, the filmmaker also presents the feminist and pro-choice response that is organizing across the country. Léa Clermont-Dion once again offers a hard-hitting film that combines embodied analysis with her own critical perspective.
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.