BENOIT BRIÈRE

Short film
Quebec (2021)
35 min.
VOF with English subtitles

Excerpt

Q&A session
1:35 – 2:00 pm

Guests : Benoit Brière & Jean-François Chicoine

Montreal, a multi-generational home loaded with books, paintings and knick-knacks, so many memories rekindled on the occasion of one last Christmas Eve. Luc, a retired pediatrician and teacher in his eighties, lives with his son François, a pediatrician like his father, and François’ wife Esther. Suffering, physically diminished, the old man has now decided to end his life. In a corrosive yet sensitive verbal joust, he asks his son to end his days in privacy. The son then takes him on an existential, circus-like jaunt through the streets of Montreal, where the father is supposed to head for his final destination, a hospital where he will find himself confronted with his ultimate wish: the choice between the finality of medical assistance in dying and a return to square one, the small pleasures of what’s left to him of living, alive.

Benoit Brière

Brière graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1991. He has an impressive theatrical track record, having appeared in plays such as Dom Juan, Bousille et les justes, Le Barbier de Séville and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. With Stéphane Jacques, he wrote and performed the play Nez à nez. His film credits include Joyeux Calvaire and Louis 19, le roi des ondes. In 2002, he appeared in Séraphin : Un homme et son péché, Station Nord and in 2003 in the film La Grande Séduction written by Ken Scott. His television credits include Gypsies, Juliette Pomerleau, Cher Olivier, Marguerite Volant, la Petite Vie and le Plateau. In 1994 and 1995, he co-hosted La Soirée des Masques. In 2002, he repeated the experience with the actors of Royal Air Farce. He gives opera workshops at the Université de Montréal and the Conservatoire de Montréal, and directs graduates of the National Theatre School at their auditions at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous. Spokesman for the Bell Canada telephone company for 14 years, he played the role of various characters in over a hundred television commercials. In Quebec, he was nicknamed Monsieur B for this reason. In 2006, Bell terminated Benoît Brière’s contract and replaced him in its ads with two beavers.