The REGARD Festival Unveils the Program for Its 24th Edition

D-day is finally here! The REGARD Festival can unveil its complete schedule for its 24th edition, taking place from March 11 to 15, in Saguenay. Having received 1450 films and spent over 400 hours watching them, the Festival's programming team has chosen 197 films from more than 40 countries around the world!

Film buffs will have the chance to watch 70 films never before seen in North America, including 30 Quebec shorts presented as world premieres. Once again, a colourful program has been lined up to give fans of the 7th art an exclusive window on to some truly excellent films!

For the new decade, the Festival team has decided to go the extra mile and include more programs. 2020 will see the public partaking in 10 official competition programs, 3 parallel competitions, 9 youth programs, 12 thematic programs, 3 special projects in addition to 8 Virtual Reality films.

Chauffer le dehors, inspired by Marie-Andrée Gill, an author from Mashteuiatsh, will open the 100% Regions evening on Wednesday, March 11. The following day, Thursday, March 12, director Alexandre Dostie and his film Je finirai en prison will have the same honour at the launch of the official competition.

Parallel competitions

Presented by Unis TV, the Shoot No Matter What! competition features Quebec films shot without financial support from the community. There are seven shorts in the program, including Smoothie, a first film by actor Pier-Luc Funk. AMERICANA is a new competition for first-time filmmakers from the three Americas. Presented by the L'Gros Luxe restaurant, the five shorts in the program will showcase emerging talents. This year, the 100% Regions projections, presented by Hydro-Québec and Culture Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean, highlights films from across the province, including six from Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. The public will be able to discover, among others, William Mazzoleni's Le Pigeon, Louis Moulin's Je suis là and François Harvey's Portrait de rue.

Thematic programs

So, what's going on across the Atlantic Ocean? First, the Festival is presenting two programs this year dedicated to Swiss cinema - Focus on switzerland shorts and Short & Swiss - to charm festival-goers with a rich and varied selection of films. From South East Asia, the public will be able to see a selection of films from the Carte blanche Singapore International Film Festival. The shorts in this program deal with a rich variety of themes on the notions of identity, a theme omnipresent at this years' Festival through its Grand rassemblement and Generation 3.0, highlighting inspiring shorts dealing with environment and trans identity.

There is also In the world of Samer Najari and Dominique Chila, a retrospective with a projection of these two filmmakers' first shorts, in addition to a reading of their latest script, Rituels sous un ciel écarlate, still in postproduction. Several regional actors will be taking part in this event. There will also be the return of several classics in the programming such as Experimental, Documentaries and Genre Films.

Among the program team's favorites: Zoo, director Will Niava's first film; SDR, by actress-director Alexa-Jeanne Dubé, and Une fois la poussière retombée by Hervé Demers. All three films are from Quebec. Internationally, Da Yie, a film by Belgium director Anthony Nti; Learning skateboard in a warzone, Oscar winner for best short documentary, directed by Carol Dysinger, and The Manila Lover, a Norway-Philippines collaboration by Johanna Pyykkö.

The official competition's five prizes will be awarded by the professional jury. Actor Jean-Simon Leduc will be accompanied by John Canciani, artistic director of the prestigious International Kurzfilmtage Winterthur; Ming-Jung Kuo, the programming director of the Singapore International Film Festival; actress- director Micheline Lanctôt and, finally, the director-editor Myriam Verreault. The other juries and awards will be announced on February 26. In all, we have 64 films in official competition, including 10 new films from the rest of Canada, eligible for the Canadian Grand Prize, and 20 Canadian and North American first-time films eligible for the Grand Prize. Thanks to the contribution of our many public and private partners, almost $ 130,000 will be awarded in cash prizes and services to the winners of the various competitions. Only films presented as Canadian, North American or world premieres have access to the two most generous awards in the competition, in addition to being eligible for the Oscar nomination process.

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