Submit your film to festival

Adrien

Synopsis: 

Adrien, who runs a garage in a small town on the St. Lawrence, has been waiting five years for a kidney transplant. While he waits, his life is on hold. He does all he can to keep his garage and his marriage going, despite his long hours of dialysis several times a week and ebbing energy. But when a young man from a remote village is hired to work at the garage, it sets off a chain of events that turn his life upside-down and reveal some unexpected and disturbing things about him.

Runtime: 
00:87:00
English subtitle: 
Yes
Information for the Audience: 

Statement of Intent

 

 

A Topical Story

Adrien is a very topical story, intimate and moving, that is also part of history. It’s a look at Western culture’s relationship with death and an artistic expression of a point of view on the current debate on the end of life.

 

Despite our society’s supposedly secular organization, arrangements surrounding life and death are still strongly influenced by religion, which heavily influences the debate on euthanasia and end-of-life care. The duty to live, no matter what your living conditions, stems from a religious ideology, from faith in the existence of a creator who, having bestowed life, is the only one entitled to end it. This moral obligation to live at all costs, as well as policies withdrawing people’s right to end their lives, their right to die in dignity by euthanasia, that criminalize it, upset me, offend me and force me to speak out.

 

In Adrien, the main protagonist’s actions support the idea that every human being must have power over his or her own life. Diminished, but still able to live if he goes back on dialysis, Adrien wants the power to choose to die. That’s a surprising choice in our society, one that goes against the dominant ideology. As he struggles with his situation, Adrien, in a way, gets his friends and family to consider this choice, to respect it, and that’s what I hope it does for viewers, too.

 

 

A Trois-Pistoles Story

Adrien is set in the Lower St. Lawrence region of Trois-Pistoles, with its people, its places: the river, the wharf, the rocks, the road to the cottages. The environment shapes people, and the land leaves its mark on the inhabitants.

 

I was born and raised in Trois-Pistoles. As a teen, looking for meaning in life, I ran all over the rocks near the cottages, carrying the weight of the suffering of my age group, of finding my place in the world, constructing my identity, sometimes through harmony, sometimes through adversity. That’s where all the film’s roots are, among those water-worn rocks: my vision of life, my sense of freedom and of dignity.

 

 

A Story of Bloodlines and Identity

I want to question blood ties, compare and contrast them with social bonds. It’s the story of two men, of two generations, Adrien and Raphael, who, without knowing each other, developed common interests, like mechanics. Coincidence or heredity? Do blood ties have a power to bring together those who share them, to make them love each other? Or do they have no intrinsic value, but merely help them develop social bonds?

 

In Adrien, both possibilities are plausibly explored, leaving room for thought. Raphael has grown up happily in a family whose father is dead, then spontaneously develops a reciprocal relationship with Adrien imbued with uncommon affection. Simple affinity or blood tie? And is Adrien what feels for this young man unconditional fatherly love?

 

 

A Love Story

I also want to tell a love story. Love that is not chosen, that doesn’t have to be kept alive artificially, love that doesn’t falter, that one person has for another for an entire lifetime, at all times, regardless of betrayals, regardless of circumstances, regardless of desire to do so. A pure love, disconnected from social life, raw, maladjusted. The only true love whose very existence is a story. A love in conflict with the desires of people in love, in conflict with social life, this love cannot help causing a certain amount of suffering. It’s the fate of the human condition and at the same time that which transcends it. It’s the love story of Adrien and Marie and the story of Anna and Adrien.

 

 

Categories:

Screenings / Awards: 

RENÉE BEAULIEU – ADRIEN / LE GARAGISTE

 

 

FILMOGRAPHY

 

LE GARAGISTE, 2015, (87min) Les productions du moment –

Screenwriter, director, coprodcuer (Renée Beaulieu, Ian Quenneville, Ian Oliveri)

 

32 FESTIVALS (21 INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS, 15 COUNTRIES)

                                    7 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS

3 NOMINATIONS OF CANADIAN SCREENING AWARDS 2016

             International Film and Photography, Jakarta, INDONÉSIE, décembre

              2015 

                                                     PLATINUM AWARD

               Sguardi Altrove 23e International Woman's Film Festival, 17 au 25                 

              mars 2016. 

                                             SPECIAL MENTION, BEST FILM

                Lucania, Film Festival, Italie, 10 au 13 août 2016

                                            BEST EDITING

                                          BEST 1er MAN CHARACTER

                                            BEST SUPPORTING CHARACTER 9th edition of    

              Film Fest Kosova «Goddess on the Throne » 31 août au       4

              septembre 2016

                                            BEST FILM

                                            BEST ACTOR 

Distribution budget: 
TVA Films
Directed by: 
Renée Beaulieu
Writing credits: 
Renée Beaulieu
Cast: 
Normand D'Amour Louise Portal Nathalie Cavezzali Pierre-Yves Cardinal Michel Dumont
Produced by: 
Renée Beaulieu
Music by: 
Éric West Millette
Cinematography by: 
Philippe St-Gelais
Film Editing by: 
Renée Beaulieu
Costume Design by: 
Léa Parent Pothier
Makeup Department: 
Catherine Beaudoin
Release Date: 
Friday, October 9, 2015
Total votes: 827

Subtitles: