Innocence and Le goût des autres
Win Top Prize at Montreal

Australia's Innocence and France's Le goût des autres shared the honors of the Montreal World Film Festival's coveted Grand Prix des Amériques at the closing ceremony on Monday September 4. This choice by the jury presided by famed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami echoed popular taste, as Innocence was also voted best film by the audience, with Le goût des autres as a runner-up. Their Montreal triumph of the Australian and French pics, already very popular on their home turf, suggests that both films will travel well internationally. Aussie director was moved by the critical and popular reaction, especially since, as he told the audience, he has "always been accused of making films that nobody wanted to see." This certainly has not been the case here.
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1 September

Innocence Conquers Montreal

The Montreal World Film Festival had its first revelation in competition on Wednesday: Innocence, by prolific Aussie-based auteur Paul Cox. A moving tale of rediscovered love by elderly people who meet again after forty years, the film instantly became the front runner for the competition's top award. At a time when pushing the cinematic envelope means more sex and violence (as in the lurid French exploitation film à scandale Baise-moi, thankfully not shown here), Cox dares to break one of the real taboos of the film industry: making an intelligent film about old age, love, and death. Roger Ebert, who caught the flick at a private screening at the Cannes market in May, declared it the most impressive film of the whole event, and he was right.
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30 August

Canadian Pics Shine and Provoke

Local production shared the limelight during Days 3-4 of the Montreal World Film Festival. Two of the four films in official competition, Hochelaga and Maëlstrom, were from promising homegrown filmmakers and they both grabbed the most headlines and popular enthusiasm in this early part of the week. The films couldn't be more different. Hochelaga is a sizzling first feature from director Michel Jetté who dares to penetrate Montreal's criminal biking underworld, where the number of gang killings have rivaled those of the Moscow mafia in in recent years.
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Fest Opening

Mamet, Puri, Rosi, Freeman and Hackman Spark Montreal Fest

The 24th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival got off to a rousing start this weekend, with David Mamet's State and Main providing one of the many early cinematic excitements. Unspooling in world premiere, this biting satire of a movie production in a sleepy New England town, with buffo performances by the likes of William Macy and Philip Seymour Hoffmann, ranks as one of Mamet's best. In town for the shooting of his next flick Heist, Mamet wowed the jam-packed marquee Imperial cinema by speaking to the public exclusively in French.
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Overview

Celebration of World Cinema at Montreal Fest

The Montreal fest has been criticized in recent years for lacking in Hollywood glitz. At a time when independent and European films are squeezed out as ever of commercial screens in North America, however, with even the number of French films released commercially at an all time low in predominantly French-speaking Quebec, the determination of the Montreal festival to keep a genuine focus on world cinema is actually a strength. Only 17 of the 206 feature films shown this year will be American. The local public has long recognized the unique value of the fest, by packing most screenings year in year out, making the Montreal festival arguably the most publicly attended festival in the world.
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