The residency carries a grant of $75,000 and will allow the artist 11 full months of screenwriting, direction, post-production and presentation for his short documentary Sans frontières (Without borders), scheduled to appear at the 2023 Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM).
Sans frontières (Without borders)
The documentary follows a second-generation Montrealer from adolescence to adulthood and offers a portrait of his complex search for identity. As he builds a “new” Quebec identity while maintaining his own cultural identity, the young Montrealer must reconcile various influences and realities.
Chadi Bennani
Chadi Bennani is a filmmaker of Moroccan and Québec origins who studied film at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He made his first short film, Nicole (2022), distributed by the Films du 3 Mars, while he was still a student. His passion for film led him to accept the role of director of photography on the feature-length documentary film Elle va crier, a more than year-long project he completed in parallel with his studies. In 2022, Bennani won a bursary for emerging filmmakers from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
The Regard sur Montréal film residency
The Regard sur Montréal film residency is for emerging professional artists who are first-generation immigrants from culturally diverse backgrounds. It provides them with a professional entry point into Quebec media, and the film community benefits from a fresh perspective of Montréal.
This residency is a special collaboration between the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), and the National Film Board of Canada, in collaboration with Les Films de l’Autre and Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM).
