Boris without Beatrice Boris sans Béatrice

Blending reality with fantasy, the idiosyncratic psychological thriller is a unique take on the universal story about the pressures of contemporary world told with satirical precision. Somewhere in present-day Québec, Boris Malinovsky is going through life with ruthless arrogance. But then his world begins to falter when his equally successful wife, a minister in the Canadian government, is confined to her bed with depression and is cared for in their remote holiday home. There, Boris receives phone calls from a stranger who asks him to meet in the forest in the middle of the night. The mysterious man confronts Boris with the kind of questions he would rather not have to think about. Will Boris be able to rid himself of his unbidden demons? "In the end, despite the social class in which the film takes place, I genuinely think Boris’ character is living something universal. The film is simple, it’s about a person being visited by doubt. I had to sympathise with him instead of making another film where a bourgeois character has to be crushed to pieces. I’m staying at his human level, trying to understand his quest or his battle with the right amount of fun and irony. I’m with him instead of playing a cynical game. Boris is not a dying insect we watch in a glass jar. He’s one of us, like it or not." (Denis Côté)   Denis CôtéBorn in 1973 in New-Brunswick, Canada. Director and producer, Côté is considered one of the proponents of contemporary Canadian independent film. He worked as a journalist and film critic until his 2005 debut feature, Drifting States, which received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno IFF. Five years later, at this same festival, Côté’s Curling won the Best Director Award.