Cœurs à vif

From the feverish claustrophobia of Tom at the Farm to the raw, lyrical intensity of Mommy, Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan explores the family — whether biological or chosen — as both a refuge and a site of rupture. Laurence Anyways unfolds these themes on an expansive romantic canvas, confronting the desire for self-affirmation with the resistance of the world, while his more recent feature, Matthias & Maxime, returns to a more intimate scale, portraying the fragility of a friendship on the brink of transformation.

Taken together, his films reveal an immediately recognizable body of work: a cinema of emotional excess and formal precision, as bold as it is profound and sincere. Music pulses throughout; frames tighten and then burst open; emotions are lived at full intensity. What ultimately unites his work, beyond its distinctive style, is a deep empathy for characters who love fiercely, suffer openly, and persist — at all costs — in revealing themselves and, finally, becoming who they are.