The Demons

In a suburb of Montreal that looks quiet, ten-year-old Felix is finishing his school year. For some time the city has had a series of abductions targeting small boys, and the news has come inside the houses. Felix has a wide imagination and is afraid of everything: of his parents separating, of illness, of his own body. The first part of the film shows his fears; the second shows what is actually happening outside. Philippe Lesage tells childhood alongside danger rather than nostalgia; the camera stays at the child's height and the adults are often outside the frame. The final section changes the tone completely and goes somewhere that will disturb an audience; the film builds that not as spectacle but as the answer to the boy's fear. It is not an easy watch. Said to draw on Lesage's own childhood, the film became one of the most discussed works in Quebec cinema of the past decade.