LES LETTRES DE MA MÈRE

In 1975, Serge Giguère filmed his first documentary images, during a family reunion. At the time, the filmmaker had no idea that it would be his mother’s first and last on-camera appearance. The small, charismatic, infectiously energetic woman died soon after, mother to 16 children in 1950s Quebec, and the invisible inspiration for the filmmaker’s profoundly humanistic approach.

A sharp and poignant (auto)biography, Les lettres de ma mère pays tribute to the “quiet story in the shadows” of a woman both well-loved and too-little known, an ordinary mother of uncommon vitality, and a symbol of an important part of Quebec’s rural and working-class history.

Documentary buy Serge Giguère (Québec, 2017, G).