Is this the world’s sex­i­est film festival?

Mon­tréal is nev­er more itself than in ear­ly Octo­ber. Autumn has set in and the leaves are start­ing to turn bright crim­son and gold­en yel­low, eat­ing has moved from out­door ter­races to steamy cafes, and long nights have over­tak­en sum­mer days. Octo­ber this year was unsea­son­ably warm, with tem­per­a­tures climb­ing into the ear­ly twen­ties but this did lit­tle to dis­cour­age sweater rit­u­al of the sea­son, as women pre­ferred to go bare-legged than to forego their wool. It is the best sea­son of earth­ly plea­sures; lis­ten­ing to Leonard Cohen’s grave­ly voice, eat­ing fresh bagels and watch­ing movies. Rep­re­sent­ing the season’s sen­su­al­i­ty and trans­for­ma­tion, the Fes­ti­val du Nou­veau Ciné­ma epit­o­mis­es fall in the city by cre­at­ing a plat­form where com­mu­ni­ty, self-dis­cov­ery, and plea­sure take cen­tre stage.

FNC might not have the pow­er or pres­tige to draw in as many notable pre­mieres as TIFF or NYFF, which run around the same time, but it more than makes up for it in con­cise pro­gram­ming and atmos­phere. There is a spir­it of new­ness to the selec­tion, which focus­es as much on estab­lished auteurs as it does on future film­mak­ers and emerg­ing medi­ums. The fes­ti­val con­tin­ues to push and pull at the bound­aries of what cin­e­ma is, fea­tur­ing a range of mul­ti-media art, per­for­mances and events as part of their programming.

Over the last few years, they have expand­ed to include tele­vi­sion series, an expan­sive VR com­po­nent (run­ning under the FNC Explore ban­ner) and cin­e­ma-con­certs that invite live musi­cians to rescore films in front of a live audi­ence (this year there were cine-con­certs for Kwaidan, Le Golem, and Sweet Movie). There is an under­cur­rent of dis­rup­tion with­in the fes­ti­val as it encour­ages the audi­ence to take note of their role with­in the per­for­mance, trans­form­ing the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence from a pas­sive into an active experience.

One way the fes­ti­val brings atten­tion to the audi­ence is by not shy­ing away from sex and sen­su­al­i­ty on screen. In a year where Play­boy had to ask, ​‘Where Have All the Sexy Movies Gone?’, sex­u­al sit­u­a­tions on screen are dif­fi­cult to avoid at the FNC. Sex is one of the few sub­jects that still can per­turb an audi­ence, whether it is depict­ed graph­i­cal­ly or mere­ly sug­gest­ed. There remains an aura of dis­com­fort around the sub­ject and a ret­i­cence to give your­self over to the screen. Unlike laugh­ter or fear, arousal some­how does not feel like it should be a com­mu­nal experience.

In Tehran Taboo, the pol­i­tics of sex take cen­tre stage. This roto­scoped ani­mat­ed fea­ture from direc­tor Ali Soozan­deh explores the untold sto­ries of sex in Tehran as they inter­act with reli­gion, pol­i­tics, and cul­ture. Depict­ing the inter­sect­ing sto­ry of var­i­ous city res­i­dents, the film explores how a soci­ety with a strict and enforce­able sex­u­al moral code cre­ates a cul­ture of shame and vio­lence. The film does not por­tray a cul­ture gripped with reli­gious zealotry or igno­rance, but rather a scared pop­u­lous unable to stand-up to a cor­rupt sys­tem that uses the pres­sures of shame to stall progress, in par­tic­u­lar for women.

The roto­scope style means that the sex is not some­thing you can get lost in; instead, it becomes a plat­form for big­ger ideas. Fram­ing and light become as inte­gral as the act them­selves, as in one scene where a pros­ti­tute has an acci­den­tal run-in with a neigh­bour. Her work while embroi­dered with shame is also seen as an impor­tant ser­vice for shy and frus­trat­ed men. Cast in dark­ness, she lounges like Olympia in a Manet paint­ing and shifts into a per­for­mance of a seduc­tress. It may be the day, but the fear and uncer­tain­ty are reflect­ed in the amber set­tings that lit­er­al­ly dri­ves the inter­ac­tions under­ground, in a kind of cav­ernous reunion.

Tehran Taboo is a film that com­fort­ably jus­ti­fies its sex­u­al depic­tions as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a cul­tur­al, reli­gious and polit­i­cal land­scape. For sex in cin­e­ma, unlike many oth­er aspects of life, is still eas­i­ly dis­missed as gra­tu­itous on screen – some­thing that is bet­ter sug­gest­ed than depict­ed, it is eas­i­er for audi­ences to grap­ple with sex with­in a socio-polit­i­cal con­text than on its own terms.

More chal­leng­ing was Les Garçons Sauvages, an exper­i­men­tal fea­ture about unruly young men tak­ing under the tute­lage of a sea cap­tain who says he can reform any child. If Guy Maddin and Ken­neth Anger teamed up to make a film inspired by the paint­ings of Hierony­mus Bosch, you would get some­thing close to this. Bertrand Mandico’s fever dream rev­els in a twist­ed and uncom­pro­mised sex­u­al­i­ty that opens with a graph­ic but dreamy rape. All the young men are played by young women and the exag­ger­at­ed vio­lence evokes a Renais­sance depic­tion of Leda (who was raped by a swan) and a dash of Fairy Queen from ​‘A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream’. The sequence caps off with streams of cum float­ing through the air in maybe the only beau­ti­ful bukkake scene ever com­mit­ted to screen.

Mandico’s art is in how he dif­fus­es sex­u­al­i­ty by approach­ing it with­in a dream­scape. Cast­ing women in the roles of vio­lent aggres­sors also under­score some of the film’s dis­com­fort, while height­en­ing its humour. It seems impos­si­ble that such a film could exist and what a plea­sure that it does, espe­cial­ly once the character’s reach a kind of Isle of Eden where all plant life graph­i­cal­ly embod­ies a yon­ic or phal­lic exis­tence. Tak­en to such extremes (penis shaped plants squirt deli­cious white liq­uids, one of the young men makes love to a vagi­na mouthed flower) the film chan­nels a play­ful, rather than aggres­sive sex­u­al ener­gy. It is sexy for div­ing so deep into a fan­ta­sy that it ren­ders sex­u­al prud­ism absurd. Les Garçons Sauvages picked up a well-earned award for the best film with­in the exper­i­men­tal New Alchemist strand (what a beau­ti­ful pro­gramme name, by the way, treat­ing exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma as a mod­ern form of witchcraft).

Beyond the more eso­teric titles at this year’s pro­gramme, a lot of sex­u­al ener­gy was pro­vid­ed by the festival’s Cannes holdovers. Joachim’s Thel­ma about a young woman’s love affair dis­turbed by her bur­geon­ing super­nat­ur­al pow­ers feels at home at the FNC. The film tack­les sex­u­al­i­ty as an intense psy­chic con­nec­tion that breaks down bar­ri­ers of free will and dream. Through super­nat­ur­al imagery, Tri­er achieves a mind-state of eroti­cism that evokes the best of Luis Buñuel.

There is a spe­cial inti­ma­cy at work at the Fes­ti­val du Nou­veau Ciné­ma. In bring­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions to watch beau­ti­ful and often chal­leng­ing films from all over the world, there is a spe­cial kin­ship that emerges with­in view­ers. It is a fes­ti­val that feels very much part of the fab­ric of Mon­tréal, a city between worlds: one foot in Europe and anoth­er in North Amer­i­ca, a city of immi­grants and stu­dents, and a city that thrives in the autumn months, rich in cul­ture and sensations.

For more info on this year’s fes­ti­val vis­it nou​veaucin​e​ma​.ca