demons web

THE DEMONS

(LES DÉMONS)

Year 2015
Runtime 118 mins
Language French
Subtitles English

A hit at Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinema and at the San Sebastien Film Festival, the narrative-feature debut from documentary filmmaker Philippe Lesage is an atmospheric thriller about the heightened anxieties of a young boy in 1980s suburban Montreal. 

Nine-year-old Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier) is terrified of almost everything—a terror fuelled by his isolation from the adult world as his parents deal with their own dramas. (Convinced at one point that he has contracted HIV, Felix hides in his closet for hours, until his older sister intervenes.) 

Set during a sleepy late summer, THE DEMONS somehow suggests both surface calm and a hazy sense of menace that starts to enclose the film as rumours of unsolved child abductions creep into its hero’s fraught consciousness. Inspired by Lesage’s own childhood, Felix is akin to the lost kids of SLEEPING GIANT, CLOSET MONSTER, and CAST NO SHADOW.  

– Steve Gravestock, Toronto International Film Festival 

Countries

Canada
Awards
Best Feature, Festival nouveau du cinema de Montreal
Festivals
Festival nouveau du cinema de Montreal
Raindance Film Festival
San Sebastien Film Festival
Director
Philippe Lesage
Screenwriter
Philippe Lesage
Cast
Édouard Tremblay-Grenier, Yannick Gobeil-Dugas, Vassili Schneider, Sarah Mottet, Mathis Thomas