The best Francis Ducharme’s movies

Hubert, a brash 17-year-old, is confused and torn by a love-hate relationship with his mother that consumes him more and more each day. After distressing ordeals and tragic episodes, Hubert will find his mother on the banks of Saint Lawrence river, where he grew up, and where a murder will be committed: the murder of childhood.

A story of two love affairs. A father's love for his five sons. And one son's love for his father, a love so strong it compels him to live a lie. That son is Zac Beaulieu, born on the 25th of December 1960, different from all his brothers, but desperate to fit in. During the next 20 years, life takes Zac on a surprising and unexpected journey that ultimately leads him to accept his true nature and, even more importantly, leads his father to love him for who he really is.

In Montreal, the teenagers Manon, Anne, Isa, Claudie and Sophie are friends since their childhood. While spending a couple of days in the cottage of Sophie's parents nearby a lake, the girls decide to give a party, and Manon and Sophie hitch for a ride to the town in a jeep to buy some beers and supplies and they invite the driver to the party. On the return, the same driver stops the car and later Sophie is found stabbed, raped and covered of blood. Fifteen years later, Manon sees the guy in a car-wash and she invites her former friends to return to the house nearby the lake, where wounds of their traumatic loss are disclosed.

William is constantly shooting video journals of his life to have as souvenirs for himself. Feeling the end of his relationship with Médéric, his young lover, William spends two days camping with him, taking advantage of the situation by filming the trip and their time spent with another young gay couple. The camera never stops shooting, even when Médéric decides to get it on with another guy in a tent. As Canada's first Dogme95 film, the story is shot on location, with natural lighting and live sound, the camera is hand-held and all superficial elements are forbidden. Yet somehow, in spite of these harsh restrictions during the filmmaking process, the result is warm and beautiful.

A high-class prostitute by choice, Nelly Arcan’s colorful life is recreated in a multi-layered and stylish mix of make-believe and memoir, revealing Nelly’s alter egos: the neurotic writer, the vulnerable lover, the call girl and the star. Nelly shocked the literary world with her elegant writing and the lurid details of sex work in her autobiographical first novel, Whore, which became a critically acclaimed bestseller. Despite unprecedented success, Nelly’s remarkable life ended in tragedy.

In 1863, a group of snow-bound travelers invokes the devil, who gives them a flying canoe for them to go home. When one of them finds his wife about to die in labor, he makes a pact with the devil to save her and his newborn daughter Liza. He then cheats the devil of his prize by sacrificing himself. 25 years later, Liza wants to marry her beloved Jos, who has to go away to a remote logging camp to earn money to save his farm, but the devil is determined to ruin her happiness.

Triggered by the death of a family member a young woman embarks on a singular journey of helping people who are about to die. The dying have nothing to lose and need lasting moments of intimacy that Simone finds herself willing to give at no cost. But Boris won't let her get away with it quite that easily. He realizes how well she hides behind those intense but short lived relationships. He won't hesitate to provoke her in a violent burst.

The crew aboard the Romano Fafard spaceship continues their mission. Captain Patenaude and his acolytes land on planet: Crème hydratante pour le visage soulage la peau sèche (moisturing cream for the face soothes dry skin!) in hopes of finding the ship’s probe, accidentally crashed, that they must have in order to move the Earthlings. Their search is in vain, but it leads them to the tyrannical Governor Supreme who rules the planet. Just when the governor is about to tell them where to find a new probe, there’s a terrible explosion. Will the captain and the Romano Fafard find a liveable planet where they can move six billion Earthlings? And if so, when?

While paranoia takes over a small town following an unsolved crime, a woman in a state of panic attempts to go on with her life after witnessing a murder.

The film is a portrait of Dave St-Pierre, a dancer and choreographer from Montreal who is urgently awaiting a lung transplant due to his lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis.