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Millie (Sophie Desmarais) with Hélène (Irène Jacob) and Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré) in Philippe Lesage’s Who By Fire (Comme Le Feu) starting to move to Rock Lobster by the B-52s: “The use of music is very important in my films …”

Philippe Lesage’s striking Who By Fire, shot by Balthazar Lab has in its center a four minute dance scene to Rock Lobster by the B-52s that turns into a conga line. Beautifully choreographed, it unfolds as a well-deserved moment of relaxation for all present at the long intense weekend in the Canadian wilderness, albeit in a comfortable lodge owned by Oscar-winning filmmaker Blake, played mischievously by Arieh Worthalter (who starred opposite Vicky Krieps in Mathieu Amalric’s Hold Me Tight).

Philippe Lesage with Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman holding up the B-52s original Rock Lobster/52-Girls record (1978)

We enter the story by car, in the...

Canadian director Philippe Lesage sits somewhere along the spectrum between François Truffaut and Richard Linklater when tracing the process of growing up. Since moving into narrative filmmaking with 2015’s The Demons, Lesage has pulled largely from the same group of young actors and followed their gradual progression from youth toward adulthood. The filmmaker tells me he plans to shoot a follow-up to 2018’s Genesis, following Théodore Pellerin’s Guillaume a decade after the film, but quips, “It’s not a sequel because I don’t expect that many people who have seen the previous films.”

Perhaps more audiences will come to discover Lesage’s filmography after seeing his latest work, Who by Fire. Four out of the film’s 10 actors return from previous collaborations with the director in this clash of generations that plays out in the secluded woods of rural Canada. Fault lines emerge across age, gender, status, professional attainment,...

Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire begins with a vision of what could be called stasis in motion. Following a car on a highway as it winds its way deeper into the woods, the opening shot holds for an unnervingly long time, accompanied by droning ambient music, before moving into the car, where the legs and hands of two people sitting side by side can be glimpsed. Only later will it be made clear that the occupants of the car are screenwriter Albert (Paul Ahmarani), his two kids, Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré) and Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), and Max’s friend Jeff (Noah Parker), on their way to the cabin of Albert’s former collaborator, Blake (Arieh Worthalter), that’s only accessible by seaplane.

The portentousness of this early journey is laced with a somewhat spiky sense of humor; in one scene, captured in a single long shot, Albert teasingly drives forward several times,...

As a general movie rule, when a group of happy weekenders head to a woodland cottage for a bit of rest and relaxation, the great outdoors has some grisly surprises in store for them. In “Who By Fire,” however, the horrors all come from inside the house — or more specifically from the people themselves, many of whose worst impulses and insecurities are unleashed by their tranquil surroundings. Dramatizing a curious case of cabin fever with keen human observation and patient wrangling of intangible dread, the third narrative feature from Quebecois director Philippe Lesage underlines his ability to carve a semblance of a horror movie from everyday domestic drama — confirming him as a filmmaker of considerable grace and daring.

It’s been six years since Lesage’s last film, “Genesis” — a long wait for his admirers, a select club still largely confined to the festival circuit, notwithstanding the polish and rigor of the director’s work.

It’s been almost a decade now that French-Canadian director Philippe Lesage’s intense, intricate dramas have been premiering in top festivals and receiving rave reviews from critics. And yet he unfortunately remains more or less unknown to general arthouse audiences.

Lesage began his career shooting documentaries, including the 2010 hospital chronicle The Heart That Beats, then made his first fictional feature, The Demons, in 2015, following it up in 2018 with Genesis. Both movies were coming-of-age stories — or more like cruel stories of youth, to cite the Nagisa Oshima film — helmed with laser-sharp precision and backed by formidable turns from a young cast. Fine-tuned and freewheeling at the same time, his narratives keep bubbling up until they boil over, in explosive sequences where the characters let it all out or start bellowing pop songs at will.

He’s a gifted and original filmmaker who should be getting more attention — which is why...

You’d expect the pivotal music cue in Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire to be its namesake by Leonard Cohen, a beautiful and plaintive prayer of a song. But instead it’s The B-52s’ infectious slice of bubblegum “Rock Lobster,” initially seeded through a dialogue reference, then heard fully in an eccentric sequence I won’t further detail. The funny, noteworthy quirk of “Rock Lobster,” though, is its structurally well-earned length of just under seven minutes. Who by Fire, running 161 minutes itself, also seems to be up to something, committing to that runtime as such a contained, semi-domestic drama: a provocation through duration.

A rising Québécois filmmaker making his second coproduction with France, Lesage thus far in his career has tinkered around the edges of familiar genres and subject matter, embedding these into his personal sensibility if never quite reinventing them. The camera styles of his two prior...

New films featuring Carey Mulligan, Adam Sandler, Amanda Seyfried, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are among 2024 Berlinale Specials lineup, the out-of-competition gala presentations at next year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Spaceman, a Netflix sci-fi drama from Chernobyl director Johan Renck, starring Sandler, Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini and Paul Dano, will have its world premiere in the Berlinale Special gala sidebar. Sasquatch Sunset, an adventure comedy from the Zellner brothers which stars Keough, Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, and Christophe Zajac-Denek, will screen in Berlin after its Sundance debut. Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, which had its world premiere in Toronto, and stars Seyfried alongside Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Ambur Braid, and Michael Kupfer-Radecky, will also have its international premiere in the Berlinale Specials gala section.

Treasure (aka Iron Box), the 90-set English-language feature from German director Julia von Heinz (And Tomorrow The Entire World), which stars Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry...