The world premiere of Gabor, the first feature-length film from writer/director Joannie Lafrenière, is one of nine global launches for Canadian films at the 24th annual Montréal International Documentary Festival (RIDM).

Gabor offers a warm-hearted depiction of the friendship between Lafrenière (Snowbirds) and photographer Gabor Szilasi, who immigrated to Canada in the ’50s and settled in Montreal. The feature-length doc was produced by Line Sander Egede (Blood sister), with the support of the 2019/20 Talent to Watch funding program, created by Telefilm Canada and the private investment Talent Fund, and support from SODEC’s Young Creator Assistance Program.  It is scheduled to close out the festival with a screening including the film’s director, team and star.

Eight other Canadian films having their world premiere include: Je me souviens d’un temps où personne ne joggait dans ce quartier by Jenny Cartwright; Dear Audrey by Jeremiah Hayes; Upstairs by Pier-Luc Latulippe and Martin Fournier; Animal macula by Sylvain L’Espérance; Far Beyond the Pasturelands by Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis and Maude Plante-Husaruk; Dear Jackie by Henri Pardo; They Sleep Standing by Bogdan Stoica and Stray Ducks by Bruno Chouinard.

With more than 50% of their film selection provided by female filmmakers in the full program, 120 films from 44 countries in all. Almost half the line-up – 54 films in all – hail from Québec and Canada, with each documentary will screen once in theatres between Nov. 10 to 21 before shifting online from Nov. 14 to 25 in three program blocks corresponding with the dates of the theatre screenings.

The festival program, assembled by new RIDM director Marc Gauthier and a new programming collective including Ana Alice de Morais, Marlene Edoyan, Nadine Gomez, and Hubert Sabino-Brunette, kicks-off with an invitation-only screening of Futura, a feature-length doc by Italian filmmakers Alice Rohrwacher, Pietro Marcello, and Francesco Munzi, presented in partnership with the Italian Institute of Culture in Montréal and The Match Factory. Des voisins dans ma cour, a Québec-made short by Eli Jean Tahchi as part of the Regard sur Montréal residency program, will warm up the opening night crowd.

This year’s program is organized around eight thematic sections, each includes short, medium and feature-length films, with the categories designed to help audiences better navigate festival programming: The Human Space, In Search of Oneself, Family Topographies, Strength of The Living, Dialogue Between The Arts, Haunted Territories, Gestures of Resistance and Echoes of The Past.

This year, the RIDM pays tribute to filmmaker Vitaly Mansky by screening the Russian producer and director’s films Broadway, Black Sea, Private Chronicles, Monologue, Pipeline, Under the Sun, Close Relations, Putin’s Witnesses and his most recent opus Gorbachev, Heaven.

For the fourth year, the RIDM and Wapikoni mobile present 4 x Wapikoni mobile: four shorts to be screened before each feature film in the Canadian competition.  Also offered: La soirée de la relève Radio-Canada, hosted by Matthieu Dugal, offers six short docs created by Québec’s next-gen filmmakers:  Jérémie Picard, Julia Zahar, Sara Ben-Saud, Stéphane Nepton, Simon Larochelle, and Aucéane Roux on Nov. 14, attended by the filmmakers.

Roundtables, discussions and other exhibits will be held, with the RIDM Awards ceremony taking place on Nov. 20 at the Salle Norman-McLaren of the Cinémathèque québécoise, featuring 10 awards including  the Grand Prize for International Feature Competition – presented by TV5 and the Grand Prize for National Feature Competition – presented by PRIM.

Tickets for in-theatre screenings are $13, while an $85 RIDM passport will grant you access to the online program.