MONTREAL — They say they aren’t part of a collective movement, but most of the filmmakers billed as Quebec’s New Wave have this in common: all came of age in the politically uncertain years after the 1995 referendum and most cast a critical eye on their culture that is rarely crowd-pleasing.

‘In many ways my films are a reaction to those big box-office hits like [2002’s] Séraphin: un homme et son péché. I was a film critic at the time and I had to go watch those films, whether I wanted to or not,’ says veteran independent filmmaker Denis Côté (Nos vies privées).

‘They frustrated me. I wanted to offer something different,’ says Côté, who, at 35, was likely the senior member of a panel on Quebec’s New Wave at the Rendez-vous du cinéma Québécois festival.

The panel of eight — six men and two women — included independent filmmakers who have left their mark on the international festival circuit in the last few years: Rafaël Ouellet, whose $450,000 auteur flick Derrière moi screened at TIFF last year; Stéphane Lafleur, writer/director of Continental, un film sans fusil, which won best Canadian first feature film at TIFF in 2007 and picked up four Jutra awards in 2008; Maxime Giroux, whose Les jours won the best short film prize at TIFF; Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, who screened her feature The Ring at the 2007 Berlinale; Henry Bernadet and Myriam Verreault, who recently screened ¿ l’ouest du Pluton at Rotterdam; and Simon Lavoie, who just released Le déserteur.

Like Côté, Derrière moi director Ouellet says his film about youth prostitution is a response to the commercial nature of Quebec’s robust film and television industry. ‘I worked at MusiquePlus making video clips for seven years,’ Ouellet told Playback Daily just before he screened at TIFF last year. ‘I was responsible for trying to sell adolescents a lifestyle based on consuming the latest iPod and being like everyone else… With my films, I want to try to show them something else.’

Many of the so-called New Wave films are set in bleak, anonymous suburbs and feature emotionally vulnerable characters who are disconnected from their families and the larger community. Yves Christian Fournier’s acclaimed Tout est parfait — he wasn’t on the panel but should have been — follows a group of adolescents who make a collective suicide pact. Lafleur’s Continental follows the lonely lives of four characters, while Pluton is a harsh docu-drama featuring non-professional actors. These films have much more in common with American Beauty and Elephant than C.R.A.Z.Y. or La grande séduction.

A number of the filmmakers brought their works to the screen without help from major funding bodies such as Telefilm Canada and Quebec’s SODEC. ‘New technology means we can bypass the system,’ says Giroux. ‘There is no excuse to not do what you want. This is what characterizes our generation.’

But new technology also has Quebec’s thirtysomething helmers worried about the future of cinema-making itself: ‘We are still making films for theaters. But we are losing ground. I would say the New Wave are those making films for the web and cellphones, the generation that is 10 years younger than us,’ says Giroux.

The Rendez-vous du cinéma Québécoise runs until Sunday.