Filmmaker Sophie Bédard Marcotte couldn’t have known the kind of journey she was beginning when she developed a curiosity about Gabriel Charlebois Plante, a theatre artist who was also her neighbour. But in documenting the sometimes highly eccentric exercises and explorations that comprise Plante’s creative process as he develops a new play based on the myth of Sisyphus, Marcotte gradually finds a way through her own personal and artistic impasse. Sweet, funny, and insightful, the resulting film is an offbeat delight, one that celebrates the connections we make with others and demonstrates art’s ability to create purpose and meaning in our lives.

This film is making its Ontario premiere!

Director: Sophie Bédard Marcotte

Language: French with English subtitles

Runtime: 85 minutes

Sophie Bédard Marcotte, Director

Since her studies at l’école Mel Hoppenheim, Sophie has developed an intimate approach that embraces detours and adventure, bypassing the standards of more didactic and conventional cinema. After producing Vincent Toi’s I’ve Seen the Unicorn (Hot Docs and RIDM 2014), she moved into directing with J’ai comme re culé, a documentary essay completed during a residency at the Centre de Création Périphérie in Paris. In 2017, she directed Claire l’hiver, her first feature-length fiction film, with cinematography by Isabelle Stachtchenko, editing and animation by Joël Morin-Ben Abdallah, and production by Caroline Galipeau. These three collaborators worked with Sophie on her film LA Tea Time (2019), a feature-length documentary road movie shot between Montreal and Los Angeles, with support from Telefilm Canada’s micro-budget program. In this third film, the director tries to have tea with Miranda July to ask her for professional advice.