At RIDM, Documentary Isn't Just Film Anymore

"We work as a collective, so everything that's programmed goes through our discussion," Sabino-Brunette says. "It's really something that's horizontal for the selection. I think it's really nice to work that way."

Curation as resistance

The result is a program that skews personal, political, and unapologetically specific: There's True North, Michèle Stephenson's excavation of the 1969 Sir George Williams University protests and Canada's buried history of anti-Black violence. There's Recomposée, Nadia Louis-Desmarchais' meditation on being raised in a white adoptive family while confronting normalized racism and maternal abandonment. There's The End of the Internet, Dylan Reibling's look at activists fighting to reclaim the web from digital giants. And there's Spare My Bones, Coyote!, Jonah Malak's haunting portrait of a Mexican couple who recover the bodies of migrants lost in the desert.

When asked if RIDM's programming reflects a full political spectrum, Sabino-Brunette doesn't hedge. "A full spectrum? No. It represents the world that we want to live in. It's also a critique of other visions of the world."

That clarity extends to how the festival defines documentary itself. This year's edition pushes hard against the idea that the form is limited to talking heads and archival montages. There are live performances, installations, and a new initiative called Carte Blanche, where Montreal musicians Bibi Club and Annie-Claude Deschênes (of PyPy) each select a documentary and follow the screening with a live set. Bibi Club chose A Sound of My Own, Rebecca Zehr's portrait of musician Marja Burchard navigating her late father's legacy in the krautrock collective Embryo. Deschênes went with General Idea: Art, AIDS and the Fin de Siècle, Annette Mangaard's archival deep-dive into the radical Canadian art collective.

"We really want to break that idea in people's minds that documentary is just reportage or TV documentary," Sabino-Brunette says. "It's an art form. It can be really explorative."

Pushing boundaries

Among the offerings shaking up audiences' understanding of the art form is  the Unframing Documentary section, which returns this year with VR experiences, audiovisual performances, and hybrid works that blur the line between observation and invention. There's also a retrospective dedicated to Acadian experimental filmmaker Louise Bourque known for their optical printing and contact printing techniques, and Focus Taiwan: Beyond the Frame, a collaboration with the Taiwan International Documentary Festival that includes five features, six experimental shorts, and a live audiovisual performance by DJ Vice City.

Quebec filmmakers are especially well-represented this year. Submissions from local directors were up 25-30% over last year, and the programming reflects the breadth of what's happening here. Among them, there's the ensemble portrait of Lac-Saint-Jean's iconic summer harvest with Andrés Livov's The Blueberry Blues; Nadine Gomez's Chronicle of a City, which examines Montreal, Mexico City, and Tokyo as a single, sprawling concept; and Sylvain L'Espérance's Marche Commune, an archival and experimental work built around the simple act of walking.

"One of the things we really like is having a personal perspective on cinema and on the world," Sabino-Brunette says. "The personal is sometimes really political, so it's a good way to enter what's more structurally political."

Every film in the National Feature Competition is paired with a short from Wapikoni, the Indigenous filmmaker collective. It's a partnership that's been running for eight or nine years now, forming a pipeline for filmmakers who start with Wapikoni often return to RIDM with their second or third projects. Some move into the festival's professional market, Forum RIDM, where they develop new work.

"It's something we want to continue to accompany them through," Sabino-Brunette says. "Some of the filmmakers are now doing their first independent shorts, or they're continuing to develop their work."

Close encounters

The festival's French name—Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal—translates to 'encounters,' and everything about this year's programming is designed to facilitate them.

Filmmakers are brought in for post-screening Q&As. The festival's headquarters of the Cinémathèque québécoise is packed nightly with  events ranging from DJ sets and live performances to karaoke and a baby-friendly screening for parents who can't find a sitter. The high stakes of competition even show face here, as the Soirée de la relève Radio-Canada sees six shorts by emerging Quebec filmmakers competing for a $10,000 grant.

In short, there's something for everyone across RIDM's far-reaching programming.

"We really try to make the festival a get-together point," Sabino-Brunette says. "It's not just the film. It's the encounters—with the filmmakers, with other people. You can see films on the internet, but seeing things together is important. You're not alone with the film after."

With most international films unlikely to screen in Montreal again—let alone receive theatrical distribution—this is the place to see them.