Social Hygiene
The mission of the Centre d'art et essai de la Cinémathèque québécoise (CAECQ) is to primary program Quebec-made documentaries and independent fiction, as well as international documentaries, animated and foreign films, while encouraging opportunities for meetings between the public and the artists. Its programming is presented in conjunction with the Cinémathèque québécoise’s under the label New releases.
Special screening followed by a discussion with the director.
Copresented by Observatoire du cinéma au Québec and Prix collégial du cinéma québécois.
Antonin is a bit of a dandy. He has a way with words that could have made him a famous writer, but instead mostly serves to get him out of trouble. Torn between twin urges to be part of society and also to escape it, his charm and wit are put to the test by five women who are about to lose their patience with his live and let live attitude: his sister, his wife, the woman he desires, a tax collector and a victim of his mischief.
Denis Côté
Denis Côté (1973 – New-Brunswick, Canada) has shot fifteen short-films in the 1990s and 2000s. He has been a journalist and film critic before directing his first feature film Drifting States (Les états nordiques) in 2005, launching a sustained and prolific creative rhythm. Carcasses (2009) was presented at Cannes’ Quinzaine des réalisateurs. Curling, his fifth feature film, won honors at the Locarno Film Festival and was presented at more than 80 festivals. In 2013, Vic+Flo Saw a Bear (Vic+Flo ont vu un ours) won the Silver Bear for Innovation at the Berlin International Film Festival. His award-winning films explore themes of solitude and alienation through often eccentric characters. Highlighted in more than forty retrospectives worldwide, his distinctive signature was recognized with the Prix Albert-Tessier in 2024, the highest honor in cinema awarded by the Government of Quebec. Nobody’s Violence (2026) is his 17th feature film.
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Berlin Winner Denis Cote on New Film ‘Social Hygiene,’ ‘Boring’ Radical Filmmaking, the Need for Male Humility
Antonin and other characters stand at a healthy social distance of far more than two meters. There’s a hint of wind in many scenes. But the idea for “Social Hygiene” came to Côté way before COVID-19, he explains...
