Montreal Critics’ Week: New Film Festival To Launch In Canada Next January

EXCLUSIVE: Online Canadian film journal Panorama-cinéma has set plans in motion to launch Montreal Critic’s Week (Semaine de la critique de Montréal), a new film festival, in January 2025.

Billed as the “first of its kind in Canada,” Montreal Critic’s Week will host single screenings and double-bills of international and local films alongside debates and Q&As. Festival organizers told us they will emphasize the presence of filmmakers, critical engagement, and dialogue as a way to “further explore and reflect on the stakes of contemporary cinema.”

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The festival’s managing director will be Mathieu Li-Goyette, the current editor-in-chief of Panorama-cinéma. Ariel Esteban Cayer, formerly of the Camera Lucida program at Fantasia International Film Festival and co-founder of boutique distribution label Kani Releasing, will serve as head of programming. The wider programming committee will feature international and Québec-based critics.

“We call it a Critic’s Week because the festival will be driven by discussion and debate,” Li-Goyette told us of the new event. “Our goal is to encourage discourse around cinema in an inclusive manner and across various audiences and cinephilias, well beyond the usual Q&A session.”

Confirmed partners for the first edition include L’Association Québécoise des critiques de cinéma (AQCC), Collège de Maisonneuve, Goethe-Institut Montréal, Woche der Kritik (Berlin Critic’s Week) and the streaming platform Tënk.

“Our hope is for an uncompromising festival that puts filmmakers first and complements the Montreal festival cycle with an intimate, thoughtful, less-is-more approach to curation,” Cayer added.

Founded in 2003, Panorama-cinéma celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Cinémathèque québécoise in April 2024 with a series of ten double and triple-billed programs. The magazine has programmed retrospectives of filmmakers such as G.W. Pabst and Seijun Suzuki and hosted a series focused on women cinematographers including Miryam Charles, Agnès Godard, Sara Mishara, and Isabelle Stachtchenko. Its supporters include the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts de Montréal.

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