Heretic has acquired world sales rights to prolific Canadian author Denis Côté’s 17th feature film Nobody’s Violence, which will have its world premiere in main competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
The director’s latest film reunites him with actor Larissa Corriveau, who starred in previous films such as “Social Hygiene”, “That Kind of Summer” and “Mademoiselle Kenopsia”, which will premiere in Locarno in 2023. Here she plays Mila, a lonely woman who works as the representative of a mysterious organization that provides assisted dying to desperate people.
Mira, who seems to have no plan or direction in life, meets Madeleine and Ludo, two free-spirited hedonists living deep in the forest. There, she begins to question her wandering life and reevaluate the dark pacts she has made with the desperate souls who seek her services.
Nobody’s Violence was written and directed by Côté and produced by Guillaume Vasseur and Gabriel Tougas-Frechette, with participation from Sodec and Telefilm Canada, with support from Crédit d’Impôt Cinféma et Télévisio – Gestion Sodec, Quebec, and Crédits d’Impôts, Canada. Terre Québec, H264, Heretic. The film stars Corriveau and co-stars Philippe Lebot, Xavier Bergeron, Gabriel Lazeur, and Pierrette Robitaille.
The film continues Côté’s long-standing love affair with Locarno, starting with his fifth feature, Curling, which won an award at the prestigious Swiss festival in 2010 and has since toured more than 80 festivals. This will be the director’s first appearance at the festival since he underwent a life-saving kidney transplant in 2023 after battling a debilitating kidney disease for more than a decade.
On the eve of this year’s festival, Côté spoke to Variety magazine and opened up about his love for low-budget independent filmmaking, why he hasn’t been sold to Hollywood yet, and how it feels to have a new lease on life, saying, “I never expected something like this to happen.”
You wrote this screenplay during the last and most difficult year of your illness, a time of uncertainty when you were living in the gray area between life and death. How did that experience influence the production of this film?
I don’t want to make a movie about my personal life. I’m not very good at it, even if it’s today’s movie theaters. People only talk about their upbringing, trauma, and family. I’m very bad at that. Maybe I’m from a different generation, but I enjoy making films that talk about myself, but they’re never about me. That’s how Mira is made. She has no idea where she’s going. My condition was similar (to hers). It is a liminal space.
I made Mademoiselle Kenopsia when I was very ill, and that film was about liminal space. This script is about what’s in between all of this that still lingers in my head. I didn’t understand the meaning of dialysis. I didn’t know what a transplant was. What’s on the other side? Because for 10, 15 years, I didn’t know what health was. I was living with toxins in my head and body and was just tired. That’s how I imagined the script. That’s something you don’t understand. I mean, this is a movie about me, but it has nothing to do with my life.
How has your long illness affected you as a filmmaker?
Can function even in kidney failure. You’re just tired all the time. And some doctors say you’re going to go in a very dark direction, but you’re functioning. So I made all these movies to suit my condition. It was hard to travel, but it’s not a very obvious disease. Symptoms are less obvious. I know I’m in a dangerous place, but it’s very abstract. That’s how I made this film. I didn’t know where I was going. And suddenly, someone donated a kidney to me. It was a miracle.
Was the process of making Nobody’s Violence different from your usual approach to movies? Did Mila come to you differently than other protagonists?
I knew I was talking about myself, but I didn’t want to be too obvious. The way I work, I never see an end to the script. Even though I’m just writing, I end up with blank pages one after another. My films are more like objects than clear narratives or organized propositions. I don’t know where this character is going.
To me, she’s somewhere in between. I wrote this script thinking of me, who is waiting for a new life. That was the point of this movie. The floating center――Mira, without asking any questions, just drifting, drifting, drifting. I love those kinds of movies. And there’s one thing she has to do. I don’t know what, but sometimes you need to do something, just jump into the void and find a new life.
I love getting lost in front of my work. I don’t even know what this movie is. I don’t even know who that character is. Who are these people? I know it’s a little silly to say this, but I love it. You feel that the objects you create can have a life of their own without you. I feel completely lost in front of something I’ve created. I love that feeling.
You’ve talked about how you miss the narrative freedom in film, and how you believe your work could take better advantage of it. why?
It’s getting harder and harder to make movies like that. But some filmmakers are still very free and (I admire) what they’re doing. The problem for our industry is that in the rich countries we live in, we have to ask money from the Ministry of Culture and we have to (explain) everything we do. You need to put it on paper. You need to fight for this freedom because they demand a very solid and strict script before they hand over your money. They don’t just write something on paper and give you money. At the end of the day, I’m trying to shoot this movie in the most improvised moments I can find, using this 16mm film and grainy ’70s editing. Those are the parts where I feel free. I’m an experimental filmmaker, but I’ve never experimented enough. You have 35 people around you and a tight schedule, so I’m always fighting to find more freedom.
Have you ever considered yourself going in a more commercial direction? Do you want to work in Hollywood?
Maybe if you had asked me 15 or 20 years ago, during those old movies like “Curling” and “Vic and Flo.” I had discussions like this with Denis Villeneuve and Philippe Falardeau, who showed me how it works. Just stay home. You read the script. And if you like it, you tell your agent and the movie becomes a reality. To me, it’s just a mysterious planet. But I was curious.
Now I can say it’s over. I’m 52 years old and I’ve made 17 movies so far. My brand is not “experimental” filmmaking. But it’s very difficult to approach a 52-year-old man and try to bring him into the light and into the more narrative side of things. I couldn’t write these scripts. I would be completely different in that industry. So these days, I don’t want to be anything other than who I am now. We will push the limits to create more free projects. I know where I want to be and I think I’m where I want to be. It has nothing to do with the story or anything commercial. I lost my connection to that world.
Three years have passed since my kidney transplant. How do you think the experience of facing death’s door shaped your approach not only to life but to filmmaking? Do you look at movies and your own work differently now?
I don’t think I was conscious of it when I was sick, but it was still a race against time. It wasn’t very specific, but people were saying to me, “You make a movie in a year, so you don’t have to do that.” And his answer was something along the lines of, “I don’t have any children. I don’t have a house. I don’t have a car. I don’t have a driver’s license. Movies are the only thing in my life.” So I had the luxury of making a movie every year. Even when I made Mademoiselle Kenopsia, I still had 15% kidney function left. I couldn’t even stand up and we were making this stupid movie. It was an unnecessary project. So why did I make it?
Since the transplant, (that feeling) has gone away. It was my old life and I can’t remember what it was before. Maybe I’m not spiritual or philosophical enough about the whole thing, but I’m a very specific person. What new philosophy can I share about this whole experience? I don’t know yet. But I’m healthy, so this is my second project, I just finished writing a new script, and I’m probably going to shoot a small movie soon. So we have the same life. Movies are a daily job. You just buy groceries and make a movie.
