Founded by the Montreal-based online magazine Panorama-cinéma, the 1st Montreal Critics’ Week – the first Critics’ Week event in Canada – inaugurates a yearly gathering meant to increase the space for discourse and discovery around cinema. This non-competitive festival will showcase new and distinct voices with an emphasis on the thematic, political, and formal ramifications of the chosen works – paired, juxtaposed, or contrasted in ways that encourage inquisitive and curious modes of spectatorship.
This new event opens on a cliché: that film criticism – and by extension film critics – may be too demanding, elitist, disgruntled, or obsolete. And yet, film criticism also endeavors to define new trends, to champion new voices, and to curate works in ways that propel the art form forward – that make cinema accessible in a project distinct from the requirements of marketing. Everywhere, similar questions arise again and again, concerning the streaming ecosystem, the politics of festivals, the lack of funding in the arts, and the limits of the image itself. More than ever, film critics must make a useful contribution to these conversations through their choices.
This selection attempts to paint a critical portrait of the world today, grappled with by films of great perspective, ambition, and integrity, no matter whether they are rendered in hushed, soft tones or bursts of DIY anger, or even provocation. As such, this selection of works embodies many of the tensions of the current moment, around questions of austerity, separating fact from fiction, challenging war and colonialism, confronting loss or memory, and bringing people together around the act of creation and its community. We invite you to discover the films, and the connections and conversations they may create when placed together in such a context.
Founded by the Montreal-based online magazine Panorama-cinéma, the 1st Montreal Critics’ Week – the first Critics’ Week event in Canada – inaugurates a yearly gathering meant to increase the space for discourse and discovery around cinema. This non-competitive festival will showcase new and distinct voices with an emphasis on the thematic, political, and formal ramifications of the chosen works – paired, juxtaposed, or contrasted in ways that encourage inquisitive and curious modes of spectatorship.
This new event opens on a cliché: that film criticism – and by extension film critics – may be too demanding, elitist, disgruntled, or obsolete. And yet, film criticism also endeavors to define new trends, to champion new voices, and to curate works in ways that propel the art form forward – that make cinema accessible in a project distinct from the requirements of marketing. Everywhere, similar questions arise again and again, concerning the streaming ecosystem, the politics of festivals, the lack of funding in the arts, and the limits of the image itself. More than ever, film critics must make a useful contribution to these conversations through their choices.
This selection attempts to paint a critical portrait of the world today, grappled with by films of great perspective, ambition, and integrity, no matter whether they are rendered in hushed, soft tones or bursts of DIY anger, or even provocation. As such, this selection of works embodies many of the tensions of the current moment, around questions of austerity, separating fact from fiction, challenging war and colonialism, confronting loss or memory, and bringing people together around the act of creation and its community. We invite you to discover the films, and the connections and conversations they may create when placed together in such a context.
