Quotes

[on her film 'Gabrielle'] I had non-professional actors, and some were mentally challenged. But I brought the script to my production and they were into it. They said yes. They never asked me about audience. I had to let go of perfection and get into the present and just try things. I had to be open and receptive to magical moments and just appreciate what was happening. Sometimes you have flaws. You make mistakes, but you have to embrace them. Gabrielle and all the people in this movie taught me to take life as a gift and be open to difference. More than anything, I just hope it encourages people to go out and sing. And sing loud!

[on Quebecois cinema] Maybe we are stronger because we have nothing to lose. We can't compare, so we don't feel that we have to compete with Hollywood. We do it in French and hope it will find an audience. We just dive in. We don't think.. We are quite individualistic and into performance, rather than authenticity. We do not live in the moment.

'When I first read Jocelyne Saucier's novel Il pleuvait des oiseaux, I was enchanted by its singular universe. Firstly, Jocelyne's writing is very cinematographic. We see the hermits' cabins hidden deep within the woods of Abitibi with its foggy, dark lakes. We smell the odor of the damp forest, of the lichen, and of the wooden stove. We are in the daily lives of the hermits, wrinkled and alert, with their many fulfilled lives, and we are captivated by Gertrude, this 80 year old newcomer who brings an astonishing breath of fresh air, even though her past rests in confined madness. Once I read the novel, these crude, ripe characters, with unusual paths, fully inhabited me and filled my heart and soul. It speaks of something great in such as simple way. Il pleuvait des oiseaux depicts a unique, visual, sensorial and cinematographic universe with rich, atypical characters. It is an ode to life and to love, a universal subject, that opens the insight on Others, on differences. This is why I wanted to make it a film filled with hope and grace. Throughout the script's various themes, meaning that of the past (its weight), wandering and fleeing (the forest), redemption (by art); we always speak of love above all else. Lost love, new love, atypical love; every one of them vibrant with passion. As Marie-Desneige discovers love for the first time at 80 years old, Ted Boychuck dies at 82, always haunted by the love he did not know how to choose. Two main love stories that intertwine and reply to each other. And all of the other characters are implicated in one way or another. With Il pleuvait des oiseaux, I wish to create a film that makes you want to enjoy life and to love. With these three hermits and a former institutionalized patient, we will never see the elderly the same way. And maybe, we will hope to grow old with the same vitality of heart as they have. This film is an ode to life and to love, with its flaws and its pain, with its surprises and its victories. It offers a look on differences, on singular, marginal beings, who show us that this same humanity hides within all of us. »

• Louise Archambault