The 24th RIDM festival brings auteur documentaries to the big screen

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After 18 years at his last job, Marc Gauthier was ready for something new. In March, the former director of the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (FICFA) packed up his home in Moncton, NB and moved here to become the new director of our city’s premier documentary film festival, Les Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal (RIDM).

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“It’s a festival with a fantastic reputation,” he said, “a very trustworthy festival featuring signature documentary films. That was my impression before and it is exactly what I discovered after immersing myself in it. “

Gauthier has attended film festivals around the world, but because FICFA runs at the same time as RIDM, he has never attended the event he now runs.

A hybrid event, the 24th RIDM will take place November 10-21 in theaters and November 14-25 online, featuring 120 films from 44 countries, including 54 from Quebec and the rest of Canada, with more than half of its lineup made up of movies. run by women.

“I think Montreal, with RIDM, has carved out a niche for documentaries by filmmakers,” Gauthier said. “Some documentary festivals may be more focused on the story being told. RIDM is largely based on the language of cinema, in a very author’s sense of the word. “

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As a good example, he points to A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces by Chinese-American filmmaker Shengze Zhu, who uses stunning views of China’s iconic Yangtze River to anchor a poignant portrait of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“It’s a very contemplative documentary, looking at wide-angle shots lasting minutes and minutes and minutes, of the landscape around the Yangtze River in Wuhan,” Gauthier said. “Throughout the process, we hear (letters are read) from people who live there who lost people at the beginning of the pandemic.

“It is completely outside of linear narrative cinema. We are visually immersed in an environment, looking outside at a mix of nature and urban landscapes that change every five, 10, 15 minutes, while our ears listen to different comments from people. Sometimes it takes a while to see where it is going. “

The film is emblematic of RIDM’s open-minded approach to documentary filmmaking, according to Gauthier. Although he refers to himself as a “pencil pusher” who leaves the programming to the competent festival programming team, he has spent the last few months watching the program they have put together.

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Among the most prominent, he mentions Jeremiah Hayes’ Dear Audrey, who follows veteran Montreal documentary filmmaker Martin Duckworth as he tends to his wife, who is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

“What a personal and incredibly moving story,” Gauthier said.

Montrealer Henri Pardo’s Dear Jackie revisits the days of African American baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson in Montreal through the lens of the Little Burgundy neighborhood.

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“The movie uses Jackie Robinson joining the Montreal Royals as a backdrop to highlight a community that lives and feels with the changing times, and then how that physical community was decimated by all the new construction in the 1960s,” he said. Gauthier. “It is a very enlightening and beautifully shot movie.

Other notable entries on her list include Zuhur’s Daughters, by Laurentia Genske and Robin Humboldt, which details the relationship of two trans stepsisters to their Muslim family of Syrian refugees in Germany; Gorbachev by Vitaly Mansky. Heaven, an intimate and idiosyncratic portrait of the elderly Soviet leader; and Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy from Alberta filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, facing the opioid crisis in her community, the Kainai Nation.

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Gauthier notes that he has stayed out of the way of his team to ensure this year’s festival runs smoothly, while looking towards a landmark just 12 months into the future.

“Next year is the 25th edition,” he said. “I decided to keep the big ambitions for then.”

AT A GLANCE: 24th RIDM documentary film festival It runs from November 10 to 21 in theaters and from November 14 to 25 online. For tickets and information, visit ridm.ca

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