(Venice) Quebec’s Ariane Louis-Seize won first prize in the Giornate degli Autori section of the 80th Venice International Film Festival on Friday. The award for best direction in this parallel part of the Mostra, also called “Venice Days,” went to his delightful first feature “Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicide.”
Posted at 1:32 p.m.
“Leaving the Night” by Belgian-Quebec actress Delphine Girard, a complex and subtle psychological drama starring Anne Dorval, won the Giornate degli Autori Audience Award. The two feature films were selected from just 10 films out of around 1,200 candidates as part of this select competition.
“Winning this award is surreal,” Ariane Louis-Seize told me, left speechless after the closing ceremony accompanied by one of her leading actors, Félix-Antoine Bénard. I’m so proud of this film and excited to see that it’s not only a crowd favorite but can also please a festival audience. Especially since the jury at Giornate was young. I am touched that Félix-Antoine could be with me. We’re both on cloud nine! »
“Humanist Vampire Seeks Consensual Suicide” is a charming vampire film with dark humor paired with a touching coming-of-age story. “This film deserves recognition for its strong creative vision and stylistic consistency in various aspects, including cinematography, acting, editing, costumes and set design,” said degli Autori, president of the Gironate competition jury, Portuguese director and screenwriter João Pedro Rodrigues. The prize for the best performance is worth 20,000 euros, which is split between the filmmaker and her European distributor. Previous winners include Laurent Cantet, Claire Burger and Jayro Bustamente.
PHOTO VIVIEN GAUMAND, PROVIDED BY THE 80TH VENICE MOSTRA
Ariane Louis Seize
“The film tackles deep and complex issues such as depression, mental wellbeing, suicide and neurodiversity, using seemingly light yet poignant and radical language,” Rodrigues added. It suggests that in a normalizing contemporary society, it is possible to find a different way of being yourself. By maintaining a unique style and language, the film reaches a wide audience thanks to its tenderness and humanity. »
The humanistic vampire seeks consensual suicide, which Ariane Louis-Seize wrote together with Christine Doyon, is in fact a particularly successful balancing act between drama and comedy. It’s the story of Sasha (Sara Montpetit), a teenager who refuses to give in to her bloodthirsty nature and bite a human. She simply drinks blood through a straw from the bags available in the family refrigerator. Her father (Steve Laplante) supports her difference, but her mother (Sophie Cadieux) is less forgiving.
Sasha is sent by her parents (Steve Laplante and Sophie Cadieux) to live with her cousin Denise (Noémie O’Farrell) and, at her insistence, signs up in a support group for depressives anonymous. There she meets Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a shy boy, the bully of his classmates, who finds no meaning in his life and wants to end it. Sasha offers him a deal.
The result is a sensitive and beautiful film, sometimes melancholic, sometimes hilarious, which multiplies metaphors and allusions, especially about the awkwardness and stress of the “first time”. “Because we are in vampire films, but also in coming-of-age and dark humor, we recognize the codes that we thwart by mixing them,” Ariane Louis-Seize explained to me this week. After the Giornate degli Autori awards ceremony, she pointed out to me that the films selected by the jury were made by women. “That says something about this selection,” she said.
The Venice Days section featured several notable films from Quebec, including Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies and Jean-Marc Vallée’s CRAZY and Café de Flore. Ariane Louis-Seize and Delphine Girard, born in Quebec and raised in Belgium, are the first Quebec directors to present a film in this prestigious parallel section.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE 80TH VENICE MOSTRA
Delphine Girard
“Quitter la nuit” by Delphine Girard, a co-production from Quebec, is anxious, raw and full of emotions and deals with “the unfortunately too current issue of violence against women,” emphasized the artistic director of the Giornate degli Autori section, Gaia Furrer, in advance presentation in the competition this week.
This remarkable feature film is the sequel to Delphine Girard’s previous film “A Sister”, which was a finalist at the 2020 Oscars in the Best Short Fiction category and won several awards at international festivals. Quitting the Night will open the Namur International Film Festival at the end of the month and compete for the new Marc André Lussier Jury Prize at the Cinémania Festival in Montreal in November.
“Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicide” will be presented on September 11th at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the filmmaker will travel on Saturday directly from Venice. This fantastic genre film will be released in Quebec on October 13th, following its presentation at the Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal.