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Ville-Marie

Written by Guy Édoin, Jean-Simon DesRochers

Directed by Guy Édoin

Canada, 2015

There’s a secret unwritten law in the Canadian film industry: Every decade, one Canadian director must make a movie that centers around car crashes. In 1996, David Cronenberg did Crash. In 2004, Paul Haggis did a very different Crash. Premiering at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival is Guy Édoin’s film Ville-Marie or Crash en Français (in French).

Ville-Marie, is a 2015 French Canadian film about of two families united by tragedy. The head of the first family is Sophie (Monica Bellucci), a renowned actress returning from Europe to film a movie with her partner Robert (Frédéric Gilles) and to visit her son Thomas (Aliocha Schneider). The second family is composed of a ragtag collection of nurses, paramedics, and staff at the local hospital. Pascale Bussières plays Marie – the patriarch of that peculiar band of brothers.

There are several things to like about the movie.

The release of Snow & Ashes has finally been announced.

According to Films du Québec, Snow & Ashes, Charles-Oliver Michaud's first film will be in theatres on September 2011.

This release takes place two years after Snow & Ashes' premiere on the festival circuit.

This is the synopsis according to A-z Films, the distributor:

Blaise Dumas, war correspondent, covers an armed conflict in Eastern Europe. When he wakes from a temporary coma in his home town of Quebec City, Blaise discovers that his long time collaborator and photographer has not come back with him. He then sets out to recapture the events that led to his friend's disappearance and his own narrow escape from the war zone.

The film stars Rhys Coiro, David-Alexandre Coiteux, Marina Eva, Marianne Farley, Frédéric Gilles, Alex Kudrytsky, Jean Lapointe and Lina Roessler.

Yesterday, Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma (Fnc), which will take place from October 13 to 24, revealed its full line-up of films. Nineteen Canadian feature films and documentaries will be presented. However, don't expect to see all films that were screened at the latest Toronto or Vancouver International Film Festivals.

Opening film:

10 1/2

Director: Daniel Grou (Podz)

Starring: Claude Legault, Robert Naylor and Albert Kwan

International selection

Jo pour Jonathan

Director: Maxime Giroux

Starring: Jean-Sébastien Courchesne, Raphaël Lacaille, Jean-Alexandre Létourneau and Vanessa Pilon

Focus Québec/Canada

A Night for Dying Tigers

Director: Terry Miles

Starring: Jennifer Beals, Gil Bellows, Lauren Lee Smith, Tygh Runyan, Kathleen Robertson, John Pyper-Ferguson, Leah Gibson, Sarah Lind and Jessica Heafey

Affinity Point

Director: Deeh

Starring: Danielle Hubbard, Jason D. Pitre, Sophie Ricard and Yann Faussurier

2 fois une femme

Director: François Delisle

Starring: Evelyne Rompré, Marc Béland and Catherine de Léan

Falardeau (Documentary)

Director: German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia...

Slamdance, which runs concurrently with Park City’s Sundance Film Festival, has announced its 2010 line-up, and there are several choices that look to make genre fans sit up and take notice.

Variety provided the names of the ten narrative and eight documentary feature films that are, in the spirit of the fest’s motto, “by filmmakers, for filmmakers.” Although not all of them are horror related, in the interest of keeping you guys fully informed on all the latest indie happenings (and because some of the docs just sound so damn interesting with topics like William Burroughs and Bolivian women wrestlers!), the full list follows:

Narrative Competition:

Cummings Farm (Andrew Drazek) - Comedy about three couples who try group sex at a lakeside strawberry farm, naively hoping it will lead to enlightenment; with Laura Silverman.

Drones (Amber Benson & Adam Busch) - A man discovers a universal threat to his life,...

What's that? You can't wait to hear about the Irish post apocalyptic film One Hundred Mornings? Well you don't have to because we already have a review of it right here! Our own Alan Maxwell called it an "uncomfortably realistic vision of the breakdown of society." Yeah, it's good.

So continuing, part of the Slamdance lineup has been announced and it's got quite a few films we've featured.

Want something horrible in the forest? How about YellowBrickRoad?

Or maybe some William Burroughs? How about William S Burroughs: A Man Within?

Yup, the lineup for one of my favorite festivals is looking mighty fine as usual, and we'll be bringing you more shortly.

Partial lineup after the break!

Narrative Competition

Cummings Farm (Andrew Drazek) Comedy about three couples who try group sex at a lakeside strawberry farm, naively hoping it will lead to enlightenment; with Laura Silverman.

Drones (Amber Benson...

The competitive lineup for the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival (of which Fangoria is a media sponsor) has been revealed via an announcement on Variety. "As in years past, competing films are by first-time feature directors working with limited budgets and without domestic theatrical distribution in place. Among the 18 titles, 11 are world premieres." the trade reports.

Fright fans may recall that Oren Peli's recent hit Paranormal Activity played the fest in 2008. As always, Slamdance will run side-by-side with the Sundance Film Fest in Park City Utah, January 21-28, 2010. While there's plenty of genre fare to be seen, we've got the entire list of films for you to browse below.

Narrative Competition

“Cummings Farm” (Andrew Drazek) Comedy about three couples who try group sex at a lakeside strawberry farm, naively hoping it will lead to enlightenment; with Laura Silverman. “Drones” (Amber Benson & Adam Busch) A man discovers a universal threat to his life,...

Since genre films are almost absent from the Canadian big screen, the creators of Grande ourse: La clé des possibles deserve to be lauded. In fact, this film is technically well directed as much as its Asian or American counterparts. However, the appreciation of this film shouldn't be done at any price since the script is its weakest link. After all, is it that easy to adapt a TV series in less than two hours?

For those who don't live in Quebec (a predominantly French-speaking Canadian province), this film is a spin-off of a hit TV series I saw in High school. After the abduction of Émile Biron (Normand Daneau), his best friend, by an old witch (Monique Mercure), former journalist Louis-Bernard Lapointe (Marc Messier) learns from Charles Foucault (Frédéric Gilles), an academic, that he has to go in a parallel universe. Once in this universe, Lapointe must find...