Films catalogue
Cardboard City
Synopsis
Against the voracious concrete and a ruthless developer, a poet stands tall, the last bulwark against oblivion, like a Gaul defying Caesar. He gathers voices from the past, revives memories, and weaves an ode to Ville Jacques-Cartier’s working-class heritage, a haven where hopes and struggles once echoed. In its streets, the shadows of labor still whisper, remnants of a bygone era, a fragile glimmer of memory threatened by the greed of the present.
Cast & Crew
- Screenplay : André Forcier, Jean-Marc E.Roy
- Cinematographer : François Messier-Rheault
- Editor : Justine Gauthier
- Sound : François Pinet-Forcier
- Sound mix, sound design : Christian Rivest
- Music : François Pinet-Forcier, Jo Millette
- Cast : Catherine Martel-Choinière, Jean-Marc Desgent, Pierre Curzi, Michèle Deslauriers, Gaston Lepage, Sandrine Bisson, France Castel, Mario Petrone, Charlotte Aubin
Genre
Topics
Trailer
Biography
André Forcier
André Forcier is a Quebecois filmmaker and screenwriter, born on July 19, 1947, in Montreal. His body of work, often associated with South American magical realism due to its elements of fantasy, is nevertheless deeply rooted in Quebec’s reality. In fact, it can be more accurately seen as one of the few existing links between Quebec’s popular oral culture and its national cinema. Unlike Pierre Perrault, who observed the ways, language, and mannerisms of a proud, independent, and deeply rural Quebec in order to ennoble them, Forcier embraces the North American "bastardization" of his society, while highlighting the vitality of popular imagination.
André Forcier’s cinema is widely recognized both in Canada and abroad. A pioneer, he was the first Canadian filmmaker to be honored with a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française (1987). In 2003, he received the Albert Tessier Award, Quebec’s highest distinction for lifetime achievement in cinema. In March 2010, he was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Media Arts, the highest honor of its kind in Canada.
Forcier’s exceptional career has been celebrated with the IRIS Tribute Award from Québec Cinéma for his 50 years in film (2018), and the Louve d’Hommage from the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma for his lifetime achievements (2019). In 2024, Ababouiné brilliantly closed the Fantasia Festival, where Forcier was honored with both a career tribute and the Audience Award. This recognition
continued at Les Percéides in Gaspésie, where he again received a lifetime achievement award, and Ababouiné won the Audience Award, confirming his status as an emblematic figure of Quebec cinema. Finally, the Cinema on the Bayou Festival in Lafayette, Louisiana, presented him with the Director’s Choice Award for his latest film, Ababouiné.
Jean-Marc E. Roy
Recipient of the CALQ Creator of the Year Award and the Contribution Culture Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean Prize, Jean-Marc E. Roy’s work oscillates between documentary and fiction. Since 1999, many of his films have been screened and awarded both locally and internationally. His series Pick-up: À la rencontre du bout du monde received a Gémeaux Award in 2012; Cowboy: Un rêve canadien and Airs Communs earned nominations in 2014 and 2017, respectively. He was part of the official selection at the 47th and 49th Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, as well as the Québec Cinéma Gala in 2016 and 2018 with Bleu tonnerre and Crème de menthe. A passionate admirer of French-Canadian popular culture, many of his productions have toured the world. A Canadian Screen Award nominee in 2016, 2017, and 2020, he released his first feature documentary, Des histoires inventées, in the winter of 2019.
Living in Saguenay since 2001, he is currently developing various fiction feature projects. Collaborating with Philippe David Gagné since 2008, the duo founded La Boîte de pickup ten years ago. Also a director for Télé-Québec, he recently completed an 80-minute anthropoetic film essay, Cardboard City, co-created with André Forcier.
Festivals
[2025] Fantasia, Canada
[2025] Les Percéides, Percé, Canada
[2026] Cinema on the Bayou, Lafayette, USA
Director's statement
Cardboard City was born out of a deep attachment to a changing territory, to a memory that slips through our fingers. Ville Jacques Cartier – with its modest architecture, its working-class history, and its visible and hidden scars – called to us. Rather than simply documenting its transformation, we wanted to listen to it, to let it speak in another way.
Early on, we understood that this film would be shaped by multiple languages: the language of archival images and contemporary streets, of fiction, animation, and poetry. Our collaboration unfolded through a constant back-and-forth between the real and the imagined, between observation and invention, between two sensibilities trying to reveal what is vanishing.
Jean-Marc Desgent’s voice quickly emerged as a guide. More than a narrator, he embodies a presence. His words carry the city as much as they inhabit it. Along the way, his role deepened, bringing us back into production even as the film was already taking shape in the edit. That detour proved invaluable; it allowed us to refine the narrative and bring its texture into sharper relief.
For us, making this film was a way to hold on to something, but also to create a space for resonance. A moment of pause, of listening. What we sought to capture was not only what is disappearing, but what endures in materials, in voices, in memory. Cardboard City is a film about what remains when everything seems on the verge of fading.
Photos
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