Of Haitian descent, Miryam Charles is a director, producer, and cinematographer living in Montreal whose work explores themes related to exile and the legacies of colonization. Her award-winning first feature, Cette maison (This House), premiered at the 2022 Berlinale Forum following a run of acclaimed short films that have played at festivals worldwide. Tonight's program pairs Cette maison with a selection of three shorts, which together exemplify Charles' uncanny approach to genre and vivid sense of historical memory.
- Cette maison (Miryam Charles, 2022)
Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examine the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, the film will explore the relationship between the security of the living space and the violence that can jeopardize it.
- Fly, Fly Sadness (Miryam Charles, 2015)
Following a nuclear explosion that transforms the voice of all the inhabitants of an island, a Finnish journalist goes there in order to find a hermit with mysterious powers.
- Towards the Colonies (Miryam Charles, 2016)
When a young girl is found off the Venezuelan coast, a medical examiner will try to determine the cause of death before the body is repatriated.
- Three Atlas (Miryam Charles, 2018)
A maid is suspected of murdering her former employer. Questioned by the police, she will reveal the existence of a supernatural power
TRT: 93 min.
A spectral, genre-defying enigma.
- Marina Ashioti, Little White Lies
Beautiful and unsettling, like a visit to a stranger’s unconscious.
- Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
A reflexive, imaginative reckoning... As much as Cette Maison takes flight into fantasy, real life is never too far away.
- Sophia Satchell Baeza, Sight and Sound
A film with a character all its own and one all the more welcome at a time when few films appear that are so poetical in concept and character.
- Mansel Stimpson, Film Review Daily
[Charles' films] create a tension between the bodily utterances of spoken or sung word and the distance of the filmed images, and often resemble a call to an ancestral space. Not unlike music, they evoke a question-and-answer reverberation.
- Marius Hrdy, MUBI Notebook
(Available to download after screening date)