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Théodore Pellerin is mesmerizing as Simon, a gifted drag queen coming into his own in Montreal’s lively performance scene. Writer-director Sophie Dupuis, collaborating once more with Pellerin, crafts a tender portrait of her protagonist navigating rocky relationships.

We meet Simon delighting audiences with his alter-ego Glory Gore, gliding gracefully across the stage. But challenges await off-stage as he falls for the charming yet volatile Olivier, played by Félix Maritaud with nuanced flair. Just as this new romance takes flight, Simon’s estranged mother Claire, an opera diva, promises a reconnection that proves bittersweet at best.

Dupuis follows her character’s emotional odyssey with empathy and care. Through vivid choreography and costumes, she brings us straight into Simon’s dazzling world of drag while keeping us invested in the messier matters of the heart. Pellerin excels at conveying his character’s vulnerability, radiating warmth even in Simon’s darkest moments of doubt.

With “Solo,” the story of a young drag performer navigating a volatile new relationship, Sophie Dupuis delivers a film every bit as mesmerizing as her main character. Affectionately chronicling the drag world, as well as what happens to its inhabitants when the make-up comes off, the writer-director delivers a visually arresting and emotionally involving story that mercifully pivots more on broader familial and romantic conflicts than the ultraspecific cultural ones of its setting. Nevertheless fully rendering its protagonist’s personal and artistic crises, “Solo” both honors and transcends its subject matter in its widely evocative, deeply affecting character study — while also happening to have an absolutely banging soundtrack.

Théodore Pellerin leads as Simon, the ambitious ingenue among a tight-knit group of drag performers. After a performance of Abba’s “Voulez-Vous” to a rhapsodic crowd, he meets Olivier (Félix Maritaud), a fellow queen who’s slightly older but no less ambitious — and instantly drawn to Simon.

Solo Image: Music Box Films Drag reveals as much as it conceals. A wig, some heels, a pair of lashes, and a bold lip can be as much a revelation as a refuge. In Sophie Dupuis’ glittering character portrait, Solo, a young performer using his drag artistry to build himself...

SoloImage: Music Box Films

Drag reveals as much as it conceals. A wig, some heels, a pair of lashes, and a bold lip can be as much a revelation as a refuge. In Sophie Dupuis’ glittering character portrait, Solo, a young performer using his drag artistry to build himself up...

Before Simon (Théodore Pellerin) struts out on stage every night in his drag regalia, he prepares backstage by lip-syncing to Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.” His persona, Glory Gore, isn’t fully formed at this point — she’s only been half-painted into existence — but when Chaka belts out the lyrics to her signature anthem, something physically shifts within Simon as he begins to inhabit the words and the woman inside him alike. Although the other drag queens roll their eyes and tease Simon for always playing the same song each night, it’s not long before everyone joins him for a communal singalong that speaks to the uniquely queer connection these queens have bonded through.

Yet “Solo” isn’t so much about belonging as it is the desperate need to belong, and it’s this pain that Simon is forced to work through when his life twists into...

French Canadian director Sophie Dupuis’ third feature, “Solo,” saunters past the usual questions of queer identity and acceptance we often see onscreen.

Instead, her film starring 26-year-old muse Théodore Pellerin dances headlong into the suffocating effects of toxic love, via an art form that’s all about liberation: drag.

The Toronto Film Festival premiere opens with a gorgeous, sinewy rising star of the Montreal drag scene (Pellerin) twirling across the stage to Abba’s “Voulez-Vous,” while the screen goes from black to neon shades of purple. As the scene bleeds into a montage of Simon, now out of drag and dancing under the club lights, the world of “Solo” widens to his fellow queens, his sister Maude (Alice Moreault), and a newbie performer who catches his eye, Oliver (Félix Maritaud). And, for a brief moment, it appears that the carefree Simon is destined to have it all: a passionate romance with the recent French arrival,...

"You should come to my show." Music Box Films has unveiled the official trailer for a Canadian indie drama titled Solo, the latest creation from Quebecois filmmaker Sophie Dupuis. This is currently set to open in US theaters starting this May, after originally premiering at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival. It also showed at the Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival last fall and a few other fests. An electrifying love story quickly develops when a rising star in the Montreal drag queen scene meets his club's newest performer, but how long can the couple sustain an artistic double act when the solo spotlight beckons? Featuring a star-making performance by Théodore Pellerin along with Félix Maritaud. "Beautifully charting the highs and lows of falling in love and finding oneself in one's art, writer and director Sophie Dupuis' Solo is a passionate feat of character-driven storytelling and visual extravagance, celebrating the drag world...

The art of drag provides the opportunity to find yourself. That may sound odd considering the objective is typically to make yourself look like somebody else, but that transformation has a magical way of discovering something within yourself you never ever knew was there. Few films understand the power of drag like Sophie Dupuis's "Solo," a radiant and intimate story of queer life and a celebration of the queer community's connection to the art of drag.

Simon owns Montréal nightlife. He's garnered a reputation as one of the premier drag queens of the city, impressing with a tantalizing combination of a tight lipsync, fierce dance moves, and gorgeous fashion-forward outfits, made specially for Simon by his sister. When Simon transforms into Glory Gore, she's unstoppable; in complete command of the stage and audience -- people just can't get enough, cheering her name and soaking in every second of her fiery performances.

The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its lineup for the Industry Selects program of films beyond the official fest lineup and available for worldwide acquisition as each gets an in-person screening for film buyers and industry execs.

Leading the selection is director James Marsh’s Dance First, a biopic with Gabriel Byrne playing the literary giant Samuel Beckett and Sandrine Bonnaire, Maxine Peake, Aidan Gillen and Fionn O’Shea also starring; and director Neil Burger’s Inheritance, a thriller that has a woman played by Phoebe Dynevor learning her father Sam (Rhys Ifans) was once a spy, which puts her at the center of an international conspiracy.

Also picked for market screenings in Toronto is Jimmy Warden’s Borderline, set in 1996 Los Angeles and starring Eric Dane, Ray Nicholson and Samara Weaving as a pop star taken hostage; The Home, a horror pic from Purge series creator James DeMonaco, and starring...

Fest also announces Connections, Microsessions, and Spotlight sessions.

TIFF has announced the Industry Selects acquisition titles available to buyers during the festival, a 12-strong roster featuring new work from James Marsh, Rebecca Snow, and Neil Burger.

Gabriel Byrne plays literary giant Samuel Beckett in Marsh’s Dance First alongside Sandrine Bonnaire, Maxine Peake, Aidan Gillen, and Fionn O’Shea. Film Constellation represents worldwide rights and the film will close San Sebastian.

Phoebe Dynevor stars with Rhys Ifans for Burger in Inheritance, a thriller about a woman who uncovers her father’s espionage past. CAA Media Finance handles sales.

Snow (Cheating Hitler:...

Drag

Quebecois filmmaker Sophie Dupuis reteams with her muse Théodore Pellerin for her third feature film — a drag queen drama set in the Montreal backdrop that was filmed in February last year. Produced by Bravo Charlie’s Étienne Hansez, the film features supporting players in French thesp Félix Maritaud and veteran actress Anne-Marie Cadieux. Dupuis has rocked the boat with her previous features in Chien de garde (2017) andSouterrain (2020) and has yet to hit an A-list film fest premiere. This might change with this colorful portrait.

Gist: Simon (Pellerin), is a rising star in the world of drag queens.…...

Following the rare footsteps of Nicolas Roeg, Mario Bava, Barry Sonnenfeld, Zhang Yimou, Jack Cardiff, and more, cinematographer André Turpin also tries his hand at directing every so often. After beautiful work on Mommy, Tom at the Farm, Incendies, he recently returned to Tiff with his first directorial work in 14 years, the mystery drama Endorphine. We now have the first trailer following the premiere, which has us highly intrigued with its evocative imagery and plotting, and hopefully U.S. distribution will follow soon.

“The intricately crafted script keeps us constantly uncertain whether what we’re seeing is present, past, future, or alternate reality,” Tiff’s Magali Simard says. “Turpin compounds the complexity with an extraordinary editing technique, putting the images through an obsessive process of repetition that reveals layer after layer of meaning. From its mysterious opening sequence to its absorbing conclusion, Endorphine is a relentless intellectual stimulant, inducing an...

What a mess! On one side we have a 2010 Canadian indie Good Neighbours, directed by Jacob Tierney, with Jay Baruchel, Anne-Marie Cadieux and Diane D’Aquila in the leading roles. On the other side – we have The Good Neighbor, (apparently an upcoming remake of the Tierney’s movie) which already has director Stephan Rick on board, and Sam Rockwell in negotiations to play the male lead. The news comes from Bd who report that Ross Partridge is in charge for the The Good Neighbor script, and that an offer has been made to Sam Rockwell although he’s yet to be attached. The new version should...

Directed by: Jacob Tierney

Written by: Jacob Tierney

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Scott Speedman, Xavier Dolan

Neighbors are like family: you're stuck with the hand fate deals.

There's not much you can do to escape them, other than murder those individuals who really piss you off. Jacob Tierney's adaptation of Chrystine Brouillet's 1982 novel, Chère Voisine, explores the lives of three Montreal apartment dwellers with a hankering for homicide that will be familiar to anyone who has ever cursed thin interior walls.

Neurotic, twitching Victor (Jay Baruchel) is new to the building, and finds it no easy task to befriend his neighbors, cat lady Louise (Emily Hampshire), and wheelchair bound jock Spencer (Scott Speedman). Victor lacks the social skills to take 'No' for an answer and bulldozes Spencer into holding a dinner party. A fragile three-way connection builds from there. Confined to their Notre-Dame-de-Grâce building by the harsh Canadian winter,...

Title: Good Neighbors Directed By: Jacob Tierney Starring: Emily Hampshire, Jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman, Gary Farmer, Kaniehtiio Horn, Anne-Marie Cadieux The Trotsky boasted an incredibly solid and colorful lead character amidst a piece that was extraordinarily well paced. Take the writer-director and star of that film and reunite them for a crime thriller and we’re bound to get something lively and compelling, right? Absolutely not. Perhaps The Trotsky drained Jacob Tierney and Jay Baruchel of all their pep and passion because their next collaboration, Good Neighbors, is quite the opposite, dull and lifeless. Louise (Emily Hampshire) lives alone with her two cats in an apartment complex. While she isn’t exactly...

Jacob Tierney's Good Neighbours will come out in select theatres in Canada on June 3.

Speaking about the story, the film is adapted from the novel Chère voisine, which was written by Chrystine Brouillet, and takes place in 1995, the year of the second referendum on the separation of Quebec. In the dead of winter, a serial killer is on the loose in the small Montreal neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace. The tenants of an old apartment house must figure out who they can trust and who they can't.

The film stars Jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman, Emily Hampshire, Xavier Dolan, Gary Farmer, Kaniehtiio Horn, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Pat Kiely, Nathalie Girard and Sean Lu.

The following is the trailer and it contains a few spoilers.

The first three clips of Jacob Tierney's Good Neighbours surfaced online and the release date for the film hasn't been announced yet.

Speaking about the story, the film is adapted from the novel Chère voisine, which was written by Chrystine Brouillet, and takes place in 1995, the year of the second referendum on the separation of Quebec. In the dead of winter, a serial killer is on the loose in the small Montreal neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace. The tenants of an old apartment house must figure out who they can trust and who they can't.

The film stars Jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman, Emily Hampshire, Xavier Dolan, Gary Farmer, Kaniehtiio Horn, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Pat Kiely, Nathalie Girard and Sean Lu.

One of the biggest surprises at this year's Toronto International Film Festival was Jacob Tierney's Good Neighbours. Surprising not because Tierney doesn't already have a reputation as one of Canada's bright up and coming talents - last year's The Trotsky was very warmly received - but because the film is so radically different from anything Tierney has done before. A dark serial killer thriller this is a world away from the John Hughes inspired high school comedy of The Trotsky. We had the chance to ask Tierney a few questions about his latest film, which you'll find below.

For those unfamiliar with the way language issues really affect things here in Canada, can you talk a bit about the setting of Good Neighbours, the political background of the story, and what it was like to be an Anglophone living in Montreal at the time?

At the time the film is set,...

Tva, a French Canadian TV network, has announced that the first season of its soap opera Yamaska will come out on DVD on September 14.

Yamaska is the story of three families from Granby, Québec, suddenly thrown into darkness. A terrible accident will in fact transform forever the life of these four friends (François Arnaud, Adam Kosh, Pascal Darilus and Emile Mailhot) and of the people around them. In one single night, their destiny is changed forever…

This soap opera written by Anne Boyer and Michel d'Astous also stars Yan England, Denis Bernard, Michel Dumont, Chantal Fontaine, Sylvie De Morais-Nogueira, Roxanne Gaudette-Loiseau, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Normand d'Amour and Élise Guilbault.

Finally, the show will return this fall for a second season on Tva.

In this video, Canadian director Jacob Tierney and actor Jay Baruchel talk about the Canadian teen comedy The Trotsky to Teri Hart during the show Movie Entertainment. The film talks about a seventeen-year-old teenager (Jay Baruchel) from a rich family of Montreal. This guy believes that he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, one of the Soviet Union founding fathers (1917). Besides, at his school, this teenager will try to unionized students.

The film has been in theatres in Canada since May 14.

It also stars Emily Hampshire, Saul Rubinek, Geneviève Bujold, Colm Feore, Michael Murphy, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Jesse Camacho, Kaniehtiio Horn, Ricky Mabe, Tommie-Amber Pirie and Jesse Rath.

Finally, here's my review of The Trotsky.

The first time I saw The Trotsky was during the previous Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal. Many months later, my perception about this teenager comedy has hardly changed. In fact, The Trotsky is a little bit silly, yet positively irreverent, but it remains a decent film meant for entertainment.

Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel), a teenager from Montreal, believes he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, one of the Ussr's founding fathers, and motivated the workers of his dad's factory into a hunger strike. After that, Leon's dad (Saul Rubinek) takes him out of his boarding school and sends him in a public school. By that way, according to his dad, Leon can have the feeling that he is living the life of the real Leon Trotsky. Once there, Leon will try to give to students from his school a real union.

In order to live the life of the real Trotsky,...

A few months ago, during a conference on film writing in Montreal, Canadian director Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky) stated that he no longer had the right to use Notre Dame de Grace as the title of his next film. As you can see on his next film's new poster, the title was changed to Good Neighbours.

First of all, Tierney didn't expose the reasons why his next film's title had to be changed.

Speaking about the story, the film is adapted from the novel Chère voisine, which was written by Chrystine Brouillet, and takes place in 1995, the year of the second referendum on the separation of Quebec. In the dead of winter, a serial killer is on the loose in the small Montreal neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace. The tenants of an old apartment house must figure out who they can trust and who they can't.

Finally, Good Neighbours stars Jay Baruchel,...

Yes, we're excited to see "Iron Man 2," "Inception" and God help us, "Predators." But what we're really looking forward to spending a few hours in the company of an undertaking Bill Murray ("Get Low"), an Italian-speaking Tilda Swinton ("I Am Love") and a toga-wearing Rachel Weisz ("Agora") in the comfort of air-conditioned theater over the next three months. (Either that or we'll be enjoying them from the comfort of home online, on demand or on DVD.)

There are no less than 114 independently produced movies arriving in theaters this summer to compete with the big studio blockbusters and we've compiled this helpful guide that covers all of them. Yet realizing that the latest arthouse and foreign fare is subject to changing dates, particularly if you don't live in Los Angeles or New York, we've also included links to follow the films on Twitter, Facebook and release schedules where available, so...

Some of you have probably seen The Trotsky during the last Toronto International Film Festival, Festival du nouveau cinéma or Kingston Canadian Film Festival. The wait will almost be over, because The Trotsky will hit Canadian theatres on May 14. Besides, the poster and the trailer of this comedy from Jacob Tierney have been online since a few days.

The four students in the front from left to right: Ricky Mabe, Kaniehtiio Horn, Jesse Camacho and Tommie-Amber Pirie.Synopsis:

Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel), a teenager from a wealthy family, infuriated his father (Saul Rubinek), because he organized a strike at the family's clothing factory. Moreover, Leon did that because he firmly believes he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, a Russian communist revolutionary. As a punishment, Leon gets sent to a public school. Once there, Leon will try to unionize the students in order to live his faith to its fullest.

Other...

Remember that director Jacob Tierney declared on October that we should be expecting an upcoming film of his that takes place in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a district in Montreal. Well, Jay Baruchel, one of the film's stars, just confirmed this morning in an interview that production is underway for this dark film.

First of all, the film is adapted from the novel Chère voisine, which was written by Chrystine Brouillet. According to Myriad Pictures, the U.S. distributor, the story goes like this: In the dead of winter, a serial killer is on the loose in the small Montreal neighborhood of Notre Dame de Grace. The tenants of an old apartment house must figure out who they can trust and who they can't, in this thriller directed by Jacob Tierney.

The film stars Jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman, Emily Hampshire, Gary Farmer, Kaniehtiio Horn, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Pat Kiely and Sean Lu.

Moreover, Myriad...

Although the Festival du nouveau cinéma commenced two days ago, this is the first movie from this festival that I review. To be honest with you, I wasn't necessarily attracted by this film since I'm not a fan of teenager comedies. However, despite a few weak spots here and there, you won't regret buying tickets for The Trotsky if you're in for a funny comedy.

Leon Blonstein (Jay Baruchel) is a son of a rich factory owner (Saul Rubinek). Moreover, Leon firmly believes that he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, one of the founding fathers of the Soviet Union. Because he motivated the workers of his dad's factory to go on strike, Leon is temporarily kept under custody by the police. Later, to get problems solved, his dad decides to take him out of a boarding school in order to send him in a public English-speaking high school from the...