146 films representing 54 countries will screen at the 2024 Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal / Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM). The festival announced its full slate today including the national and international competitions.
On the Canadian front, seven documentaries vie for RIDM’s top prize. The titles include Pablo Álvarez-Mesa’s Hot Docs’ Best Canadian Feature winner The Soldier’s Lagoon, an experimental portrait of the landscapes of loss, and Oksana Karpovych’s acclaimed Intercepted, which considers Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine told through the covertly recorded phone calls of Russian soldiers. Another story of wartime violence comes in Parmi les montagnes et les ruisseaux from Jean-François Lesage, which looks at the plight of two Chinese exiles.
Meanwhile, Billy by Lawrence Côté-Collins profiles a person with schizophrenia in search of solace, while another character study comes in Yann-Manuel Hernandez and Margaux Latour’s Tout sur Margo, which looks at an ingénue’s personal journey. A search for answers also hits RIDM with Annie St-Pierre’s Le Plein potentiel. Finally, Sylvain L’Espérance’s Archéologie de la lumière rounds out the national competition with a distinctly cinematic consideration of landscapes.
In the 11-film international competition, RIDM will screen Gabrielle Brady’s poetic hybrid study of displacement The Wolves Always Come at Night, while questions of belonging and exile fuel Carlos Yuri Ceuninck’s Omi Nobu, the New Man. The re-appropriation of archives, meanwhile forms the basis of several competition docs: Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film, Courtney Stephens’ Invention, Sofie Benoot’s Apple Cider Vinegar, Camilo Restrepo’s La chamber d’ombres, and Herná Rosselli’s Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed.
Character studies and questions of identity appear in Adrián Orr’s To Our Friends, Alexandra Gulea’s Maia – Portrait with Hands, and Paula Ďurinová’s Lapilli. Finally, youth in revolt are at the centre of Jin Jiang’s tale of Chinese revolutionaries in Republic.
These films join previously announced RIDM titles including the films in the inaugural Magnus Isacsson competition, which puts the prize within its own identified stream, as well as the opening night selection Preparations for a Miracle by Tobias Nölle and the closing night film Ninan Auassat: We, the Children by Kim O’Bomsawin. The latter doc just won Best Canadian Documentary at VIFF.
Other highlights announced for RIDM include festival circuit favourites No Other Land by the Palestinian-Israeli collective of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, and Union by Brett Story and Stephen Maing. RIDM festival also scores a notable get with a special screening of Abiding Nowhere from arthouse favourite Tsai Ming-liang.
This year’s festival runs Nov. 20 to Dec. 1. The full line-up is available at RIDM.ca.
