Village Gamer

Telefilm Canada is pleased to be funding multiple award-winning writer-director Xavier Dolan’s French-language feature film Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only The End of the World), through the Canada Feature Film Fund. This majority Canadian coproduction with France will star Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone, La Vie en Rose), Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color), Vincent Cassel (Black Swan), Nathalie Baye (Laurence Anyways) and Gaspard Ulliel (Saint Laurent).

“This announcement is great news for Xavier Dolan’s fans—and he has many fans, in Canada and around the world,” said Carolle Brabant, Executive Director of Telefilm Canada. “They’ve been eagerly awaiting the next film from this talented young filmmaker who never fails to surprise and move his audiences. With Mommy, which won nine Canadian Screen Awards and eight Jutra awards earlier this year, Xavier quickly established himself as one of Canada’s leading filmmakers. We’re proud to have funded several of his projects, and to have supported him in the international promotion of Mommy, which was selected to represent Canada at the Oscars.”

Dolan is a prolific Canadian filmmaker with an international reputation. It’s worth noting that Xavier Dolan, only 26, has already written and directed five French-language features: J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother), Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats), Laurence Anyways, Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm) and Mommy. It’s Only The End of the World will be his sixth French-language film.

Xavier Dolan first attracted attention with J’ai tué ma mère at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to cement his international reputation with Mommy, which shared the Jury Prize with filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and won the César award for Best Foreign Film in 2015. This year, Dolan will be the youngest member of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival jury, serving alongside Joel and Ethan Coen, Rossy de Palma, Sophie Marceau, Sienna Miller, Rokia Traoré, Guillermo del Toro and Jake Gyllenhaal.

He will also take the opportunity while in Cannes to launch the international sales of Juste la fin du monde at the Festival’s Marché du Film, thereby bolstering his film’s visibility on the international scene.

It’s Only The End of the World
Adapted from Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play Juste la fin du monde
Director: Xavier Dolan
Production: Xavier Dolan, Sons of Manual; Nancy Grant and Sylvain Corbeil, Metafilms (Canada); Nathanaël Karmitz, MK2 (France)
Distribution: Les Films Séville (Entertainment One Films)

After a 12-year absence, a writer goes back to his hometown to announce his upcoming death to his family. As resentment soon rewrites the course of the afternoon, fits and feuds unfold, fuelled by loneliness and doubt, while all attempts at empathy are sabotaged by people’s incapacity to listen, and love.

Production is set to begin before the end of May 2015. Xavier Dolan will then start pre-production work on his highly anticipated seventh feature, the English-language film The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.