At Regard it's more than OK to be a 'little freak'

Le Bel Écran is a monthly column about Quebec's screen culture from a local perspective. 

If you've never been to the Regard Film Festival, it's difficult to explain its charm. Located in Saguenay, the festival is devoted specifically to short films and takes place every March. So while it officially takes place in spring, snowbanks can reach upwards of six feet high and a winter wind that descends from the fjords overlooking Saguenay and Chicoutimi rivers, plunges temperatures well below zero. 

Despite being six hours away from Montreal and three hours away from Quebec City, approximately 30,000 people now attend the festival annually. The energy is vibrant and playful; think sugar shack meets film festival vibes. It might be cold outside but it's not going to keep people from having a good time.

Regard has been around for nearly thirty years now and has become one of North America's most important festivals for short films during that time. It is now an Oscar qualifying festival, meaning that films that win the Canadian Grand Prize are automatically eligible in the Academy Awards short film categories. They also run a professional film market: the only one in Canada devoted to short films, which features panels, master-classes and events that help promote young screenwriters. There are few places on earth where the joy and pleasure of short films are celebrated with the same enthusiasm and passion as Saguenay.

While the selection of films runs internationally, there has always been strong local representation, and the festival has long highlighted the best of established and emerging filmmakers in Quebec. Filmmakers like Meryam Joubeur, whose short film Brotherhood screened at Regard and was eventually nominated for an Oscar, recently made the leap to feature-filmmaking with Who Do I Belong To. Her film built on her short film and is an impressionistic look at a family in rural Tunisia torn apart by the radicalization of one of their sons, premiered at the Berlinale last year and has won awards in festivals around the world. 

Other filmmakers like Charlotte Le Bon (who is also an actress and can currently be seen playing Chloe on The White Lotus), Annick Blanc and Jean-François Leblanc followed a similar trajectory, making award winning shorts that they eventually parlayed into their first feature. While Regard is certainly not the only reason for their success, it's certainly a large part of it.

Among this year's highlights include Pidikwe, a new experimental short from Caroline Monnet, an ecstatic reimagining of the roaring 1920s which mixes indigenous traditional and contemporary dance as a means of exploring healing through community and art. Shot on 16mm on a darkened stage, lights halo around dancers that move with an infectious sense of freedom and self-possession. A clash of emotions and eras, the short film draws on Monnet's previous work of cultural amalgamation and also the figure of the indigenous woman's body as a battleground for violence but also healing. 

Another standout was Vincent René-Lortie's A Dying Tree. His previous short film, Invincible, was nominated for best live action short film at last year's Oscars. With his return to Regard, René-Lortie has challenged audiences with a genre-bending sensorial experience that is ostensibly about a worn-out office worker who encounters a chimpanzee which sets him on an irreversible path. Shot in textured black and white, the film dissolves the line between waking and dreaming life. By evoking early David Lynch with a touch of Leos Carax, the film draws on the logic of the subconscious to guide the audience through a thrilling but upsetting world of dance and deception. 

For filmmaker and curator Vincenzo Nappi, the 2025 Regard was his first experience at the festival. "I've been saying to everybody, it's been one of the most positive film experiences of my life," he says. "Everyone here seems to want to have a good time and there's people from all levels of the Quebec industry here from Oscar hopefuls to my little movie made for $1000." Nappi was born and raised in Laval, QC. He's also, in the words of our esteemed local government, a "historic anglophone." He's not only a filmmaker, but programs Canadian shorts at the Fantasia International Film Festival and curates a monthly screening series at Cinema Public called Enter the Videodrome focused on Canadian cinema.

Nappi's film, Oh…Canada (not to be confused with the recent Paul Schrader film of almost the same name), premiered as part of the festival's Genre film block. A dark and comedic parody of educational films, the movie takes a look at the artifice and absurdities at the heart of the Canadian identity. "It's a musical-horror-comedy-political satire which is meant to emulate the Canadian PSAs of the 50s and 60s, you know, the type of thing you would see rolled in on a box TV in a classroom. It's questioning the Canadian or Federal branding of Canada and the contradictions that come with the Canadian identity," he says. "It's a goofy movie touching on very serious topics."

As a festival programmer who also specialises in short films, Nappi sees it almost as a separate medium. Short film, for him, is a space where filmmakers are able to explore without the same market pressures that come with making a feature film. In other words, "you can get away with sort of being a little freak," Nappi laughs. He was impressed by how diverse the programming choices were at Regard, balancing relatively big budget short films with micro budget experiences, across all genres and sensibilities. 

Despite speaking English, Nappi has come around in recent years to identify more as a Quebecer. In part, his film explores that tension. "The anglo versus franco conversation is largely perpetuated by the government and I think intentionally so. When you look at what they're preaching, it doesn't really add up," he explains. "For a long time I didn't consider myself Quebecois because I'm anglophone, but I was born here, I was raised here. My mom's from here. Even if I speak English, it's my home." 

Even when it comes to Regard, Nappi had viewed it primarily as a French Festival but was surprised to find how open it was. "I was a bit nervous going into it, but everybody was super accommodating to the level of French I could speak, despite being here forever. It was just a bunch of anglophones and a bunch of francophones, all getting together and partying, so that was cool."