Bestiary
To celebrate Denis Côté receiving the Prix Albert-Tessier (Quebec’s highest honor for a filmmaker) we are presenting a retrospective of his work. From his debut to his latest feature film (his sixteenth), his directorial choices and perspective have remained at the core of his storytelling. Embracing documentary techniques, a cornerstone of Quebec cinema, he explores the truth-bearing power of cinematic images, testing their limits through a masterful mise-en-scène. In the truest sense, he seeks to uncover the unexpected, the improbable, peeling back the layers of a world that is both enigmatic and complex. His filmmaking evokes the essence of cinema’s early days, where the camera casts a unique and unparalleled light on the world we inhabit.
Preserved in our collections
From winter to summer, animals and humans cohabit and observe each other in this thoughtful documentary by Denis Côté, who captured these images over eight days at Parc Safari, during winter and summer 2011.
Denis Côté
Denis Côté (1973 – New Brunswick, Canada) founded nihilproductions in the 1990’s and shot about 15 short films. He was a journalist and film critic before directing his first feature film Les états nordiques in 2005, beginning a sustained collaboration with producer Stéphanie Morissette that continued with Nos vies privées in 2007, and then Curling, his fifth feature film, which won top honors at the Locarno Film Festival and was shown in over 70 festivals. His films have been shown in dozens of cinematic events. His first feature film under the umbrella of La maison de prod, Vic+Flo ont vu un ours, won the Silver Bear (Alfred Bauer Prize) at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.
