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.
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“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
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About the NFB
For more than 80 years, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has produced, distributed and preserved those stories, which now form a vast audiovisual collection—an important part of our cultural heritage that represents all Canadians.
To tell these stories, the NFB works with filmmakers of all ages and backgrounds, from across the country. It harnesses their creativity to produce relevant and groundbreaking content for curious, engaged and diverse audiences. The NFB also collaborates with industry experts to foster innovation in every aspect of storytelling, from formats to distribution models.
Every year, another 50 or so powerful new animated and documentary films are added to the NFB’s extensive collection of more than 14,000 titles, half of which are available to watch for free on nfb.ca.
Through its mandate, its stature and its productions, the NFB contributes to Canada’s cultural identity and is helping to build the Canada of tomorrow.