Director François Girard
Canada 2017
99 minutes
Writer François Girard
Editor Gaétan Huot
Cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc
Cast Samian, Raoul Max Trujillo, Vincent Perez
The latest from internationally acclaimed director François Girard (Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin), Hochelaga, Land of Souls is a mesmerizing time travel drama spanning eight centuries of layered indigenous, colonial, and contemporary histories. When a sinkhole suddenly opens up on the field of a downtown Montreal football stadium during a game, the city’s past and present begin to intersect. As part of the investigation of the event, an archaeological dig is set up on the site, believed to have been at one time the Iroquois village of Hochelaga. Uncovering artefacts and clues to Montreal’s extraordinary past, Baptiste Asigny, a young archaeologist of Mohawk heritage, embarks on an incredible journey of discovery through the tangled history of his at once modern and ancient city. Girard’s film moves seamlessly between pre-European times, the age of the French explorer Jacques Cartier and his first contact with the Iroquois people, as well as the subsequent convulsive political and social events that occurred in this very space over the centuries right up to Asigny’s own contemporary Montreal. It is an imaginative cinematic weave, a stunning tapestry of time and space, memory and identity.
François Girard’s remarkable career has spanned video art, television, contemporary dance, music, and cinema, and has yielded such diverse works as Le dortoir (1991), Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live (1994), and Bach Cello Suite #2: The Sound of Carceri (1997). His feature films include: Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993), The Red Violin (1998), Silk (2007), and Boychoir (2014). Girard has also directed operas at international venues, including most recently his critically acclaimed Parsifal in New York.
