Films catalogue
Heaven Forbid
Synopsis
Heaven Forbid is a short fiction film about a twelve-year-old girl on a quest to save her dog's immortal soul. Beth is still grappling with her mother's death when she discovers that her father is harbouring a secret: their dog is sick and requires major surgery. Beth reaches out to her Youth Group for support, only to be told that, according to their Anglican Christian tradition, dogs do not have souls. The realization that her canine companion cannot join her mother in heaven shakes her faith. Beth must forge her own path to reconcile her beliefs with the crisis at hand.
Cast & Crew
- Screenplay : Alexandra Bégin
- Cinematographer : Isabelle Stachtchenko
- Editor : Emmanuelle Lane
- Sound : Pablo Villegas
- Sound mix : Bruno Bélanger
- Sound editor : Michael Binette
- Music : Joseph Marchand
- Artistic Director : Yola Van Leeuwenkamp
- Cast : Rosemay Lefebvre, Pierre Simpson, K.C Coombs, Yo-Han Redweik Leung
Genre
Topics
Biography
Alexandra Bégin is a Montreal-based Filmmaker and Scriptwriter. After completing an MFA in Filmmaking from Concordia University in 2016, she founded Collectif Can,Did an interdisciplinary collective that presented its first creation at Festival SOIR in the summer of 2018. She has received funding from CALQ and the CCA for her upcoming short film Heaven Forbid and is currently writing her first feature film, Not Even Past, with support from the CCA.
Festivals
- 2025 -
ClujShort, Cluj, Roumanie
Director's statement
Heaven Forbid is part of my artistic exploration of the West Island of Montreal. The community of Beth is inspired by the one I grew up in, a small middle-class, mainly English-speaking Anglican congregation. As an Anglophone filmmaker from Montreal making an English film, I understand that it is necessary for my work to reach an international audience. That being said, I see my films as communication tools in the cultural conversation taking place here in Quebec. In Heaven Forbid, I wanted to explore the imaginative way children perceive reality and study the subtleties of the sensory state of a grieving person. With this coming-of-age story, I aim not only to portray a young girl overcoming obstacles but to show that one can learn to live life in their own way.
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