Canada’s entry is the stunning film “Higher than flames will go” by Monique LeBlanc.

In this cinematic tour de force, Monique LeBlanc brings to the screen Louise Dupré’s 2011 Governor General’s Award-winning book of poetry, Plus haut que les flammes, recited in its entirety in the film by actress Violette Chauveau. Devastated by a visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, a woman, a grandmother, tries to go on living and caring for a child. Because beyond the worst man-made horrors there is childhood, through which all roads to the future must pass. Weaving different stories, different experiences, and different landscapes together, from Auschwitz to Canada via the United States, Nicaragua and the Ukraine, the filmmaker offers a moving meditation on how we might elevate the youth that will inherit this world “higher than flames will go.”

Festivals

Festival international du film sur l’art (FIFA), Montréal, Québec (2020), Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie – FICFA, Moncton, New Brunswick (2020)

In French and other languages with English subtitles.