(BERLIN) Up in the Berlinale Palast, on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz, in front of the entrance to the large gala hall, you cannot miss the life-size photographs that the high-ranking guests sign every day. On Monday it was Isabelle Huppert. On Tuesday it was Martin Scorsese. Denis Côté, in turn, scratched his portrait on Wednesday, which has been hanging on the wall next to those of all jury members since the beginning of the 74th Berlinale.
Posted at 8:41 p.m.
There is no Quebec filmmaker more closely associated with the Berlin Festival than Denis Côté. He is a subscriber. Since Bestiaire in 2012, he has presented seven of his films there, four of which were in official competition. He was there again last year with A Summer Like That. In 2013 he won the Silver Bear for Innovation for “Vic+Flo Saw a Bear” and in 2021 he won the award for best performance in the “Encounters” category for “Social Hygiene”.
This year he is part of the jury of this section dedicated to the so-called more daring forms of cinema. And the task doesn't seem to be easy for him, even if the other jurors are filmmakers he knows and respects. “We are wondering how the consultations should continue,” he said. Do we all offer our personal successes? Can we find five films that deserve to be part of the discussion? »
You wouldn't guess it by listening to his juror's fears, but Denis Côté is like a fish in water in Berlin. He seems embarrassed that I brought this to his attention, but he is here at “his” festival. “It's certainly an honor to be there,” he admits to me between two screenings in the café of the Potsdamer Platz Hotel, where all the jurors are staying. But I'm so not the type to speak with my feelings and my heart that I feel compelled to tell you in the same sentence that Carlo [Chatrian, le directeur artistique sortant de la Berlinale] found a friend. »
He's not just in Berlin because he has influential friends. He is one of the authors who count in world cinema. His films have been presented in around forty retrospectives around the world. There will be a new one in Colombia in the fall. The Criterion Channel platform – Ali Baba's digital cave for film fans – recently presented some of his works.
There is a fight for this in Berlin. I met him at two cocktail parties and stood in line with him at an official screening at the Berlinale Palast. On average, every five minutes someone came and tapped him on the shoulder in greeting. A filmmaker or actress, festival director or programmer from Europe, Asia, South America, Canada or the United States. Barrabas in the Passion (neither Hamaguchi nor Scorsese's film).
At international festivals, this former critic and darling of the Cahiers du Cinéma has been probably Quebec's most sought-after filmmaker for 15 years. Mademoiselle Kenopsia, his latest film, has just been invited to South Korea. The paradox is that his works are generally seen by fewer than 5,000 people in Quebec. “This is the nicest room I'll ever have.” It's happening tonight! » he explained to an enthusiastic young audience at the premiere of this fascinating cinematic essay last fall as part of the Montreal International Documentary Meetings.
I met him a few weeks earlier in Rouyn, at the opening banquet of the Abitibi-Témiscamingue International Cinema Festival, and he was less in demand there than in Berlin. However, he is one of the greatest ambassadors of our seventh art. I remember when I visited a video store in Paris a few years ago, there were only three filmmakers in the Quebec section: Denis Villeneuve, Xavier Dolan and Denis Côté.
In 2009, all three were selected for the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Côté for Carcasses, Villeneuve for Polytechnique and Dolan for I Killed My Mother. They competed alongside Hong Sang-soo, Michel Franco, the Safdie brothers, Naomi Kawase, Alain Guiraudie, Riad Sattouf, Pedro Costa, Hippolyte Girardot, Sebastian Lelio, the late Lynn Shelton and none other than Francis Ford Coppola.
All 15 of Denis Côté's feature films were released at Category A festivals. Only two of them did not win a festival award. The winner of the Best Director Award at the Locarno Festival for Curling in 2010 is part of a band that is the left field of world cinema. He is aware of this and almost apologizes for it.
“I think I took advantage of the Cahiers authors’ old idea of politics. We discover a writer, we're there for his next film, and then when we love him, we don't let him go. We follow a signature. I am not complaining! I have been earning my living by producing innovative films for 20 years. I'm not saying it's happiness, but it's a luxury. »
His connection to film festivals is so close that Quebec City Cinema Festival co-founder Olivier Bilodeau offered to donate a kidney to him. Côté had suffered from kidney failure for 17 years. The transplant took place last summer. “It's a beautiful miracle, the transplant. Every day that goes by I think of Olivier and I'm still trying to figure out how to thank him. »
He says he found an energy he hasn't had in a while. But he feared the worst when several jurors experienced flu-like symptoms last weekend. One of them even had to be hospitalized. “I'm still a bit fragile. My immune system is weak, but I go to parties and can do things I haven't been able to do for the last five years. »
The filmmaker remains just as prolific – he has, more or less, four projects in the works – but he has no intention of returning to the frenetic pace of the festival circuit he experienced before. “I had to take an 18-month break,” says Côté, who recently turned 50. Illness and age have made me think about the rhythm of festivals. Although of course it's always nice when a young person comes up to me on the street abroad and tells me that he likes my cinema. »
The accommodation costs were covered by the Berlinale and Telefilm Canada.