For its 11th year, the DiverCiné Film Festival is showcasing Francophone culture and creativity on the big screen in Ottawa.
The festival opened at the ByTowne Cinema on March 8 with acclaimed Senegalese film La Pirogue and will close with the same film, with English subtitles instead of French.
“It’s one of the most successful African films of the last decade,” said French Embassy audiovisual attaché, Erika Denis.
“It’s a film we’re really proud to have on the programming,” she said of La Pirogue, which tells the harrowing story of Senegalese men attempting to escape to Spain on the ocean, in an open boat.
DiverCiné screens films from all over the world, Denis said.
“We have a film from Europe, from Africa, from Asia — we have a film from Egypt. It’s [a] chance for Ottawa to discover the reality of stories coming from those countries,” she said.
The embassy of France in Canada is a key partner in the organization of the festival, along with the Canadian Film Institute (CFI), and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
“Each year, this festival provides a unique showcase for the work of Francophone filmmakers from Canada and beyond,” Canadian Heritage spokesman Pierre Manoni said via email.
“The International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) has 77 member-states and observers from all parts of the world. DiverCiné films come from these countries, including Canada, and reflect their considerable diversity,” he said.
According to Manoni, the CFI is most active in the selection of these films.
Carleton film studies professor Tom McSorley is on the CFI’s board of directors, and is involved in this selection.
“We travel to festivals in Montreal and Cannes and other places and see a lot of films and we basically act as kind of research and development curators for an organization primarily through the French embassy,” McSorley said.
He described the festival as depicting “a really diversified set of cultures and contexts and histories, under this umbrella of Francophonie.”
McSorley said a great variety of style and subject matter is found in the selected films.
Le jour des corneilles, which will be shown on March 17 is an animated children’s feature from France.
“We’re hoping that the animations will attract kids and their families,” McSorley said.
Camion, to be shown March 14, is a French-Canadian film about a truck driver and an accident that haunts him, a “very small, modest story, but beautifully told,” McSorely said.
Rebelle, a Canadian film about child soldiers in Africa, which was nominated for an academy award this year, will be shown on March 15.
“The idea of this festival is to try to show people things that they wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to see through more commercial channels,” McSorley said.
“Maybe they’ll take a chance and go – it’s just a kind of hope that the door can be pushed open a little bit further by putting on something like this”
The festival will end on March 17, with the second showing of La Pirogue.
