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Montreal Critics’ Week: NFB present at first edition. A Man Imagined, Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s “documentary fable” about the raw reality of a man living on the fringes, makes its Montreal premiere in the festival’s opening program.

PRESS RELEASE
18/12/2024

December 18, 2024 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

The NFB will be part of the very first Semaine de la critique de Montréal (Montreal Critics’ Week), taking place from January 13 to 19, 2025, at the Cinémathèque Québécoise and Cinéma Moderne. The newly minted festival will host the Montreal premiere of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s “documentary fable” A Man Imagined (Un homme imaginé) in its opening program. Montreal is the filmmakers’ hometown and the film’s shooting location. Capturing the day-to-day life of a decades-long street survivor, this bold film had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was an official selection at several festivals around the world, including the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver. It was also the Director’s Choice Award winner at the Tallahassee Film Festival.

Quote

“Together, over a period of two-and-a-half years, we crafted an intimate and immersive portrait of a man with a rich inner life who is routinely overlooked and often feared… We offer A Man Imagined as a testament to survival.” – Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, filmmakers

About the film

A Man Imagined (Un homme imaginé) by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky (62 min)
Produced at the NFB by Rohan Fernando
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/a-man-imagined

  • Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined is a bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay.
  • Made in close collaboration with 67-year-old Lloyd and unfolding along psychological lines, the film reveals, with great cinematic beauty, the existential solitude of a man at once gentle and marred by a storied past.

About the filmmakers

  • Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky are collaborative artists working at the intersection of documentary and narrative cinema. Their films have screened at the Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam and Locarno film festivals, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Musée de la Civilisation, ICA London, the Museum of the Moving Image, Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center.
  • They’ve won numerous awards for their work. Their feature debut, Francine, starring Academy Award winner Melissa Leo, was described as “raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity” by The Hollywood Reporterand was selected as a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Their documentary The Patron Saints was called “one of the most powerful Canadian documentaries of recent years” by POV Magazine.

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French version here | Version française ici.

Media Relations

  • About the NFB

    Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of distinctive, engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 6,500 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 11 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.