Montreal Critics’ Week embraces bold cinema

A vital rendezvous for audiences craving international film voices

December 15, 2026

The 2nd Montreal Critics’ Week unveils an ambitious, critic-driven program that will transform Cinéma du Musée into a hub of bold, exploratory cinema from January 12 to 18, 2026. Bringing together 26 films from 14 countries, the non-competitive festival offers seven carefully curated days of screenings paired with in-depth conversations between filmmakers, writers, critics and the public.

Following a first edition that reached an impressive 98% occupancy rate, the Montreal Critics’ Week moves to Cinéma du Musée, a venue that can accommodate nearly 300 spectators per screening.
Across one full week, the event presents shorts, mid-length and feature films in programs conceived as thematic journeys rather than conventional “lineups,” reinforcing its identity as a critic-led space for discovery and debate.

A growing festival at Cinéma du Musée

An initiative of the Montreal-based online magazine Panorama-cinéma, the Montreal Critics’ Week brings its critical perspective into the cinema by creating a space for discussion and discovery. Non-competitive by design, the festival promotes emerging filmmakers through thematic, formal and political pairings that invite spectators to consider the broader resonances of each work, beyond simple representation.

This collective curatorial framework underpins the Week’s commitment to rigorous, argumentative programming rather than market-driven selection.

“This edition takes the form of a journey through a succession of landscapes, alternately deserted and fertile: an ambiguous space from which life and invention nevertheless emerge,” write Director of Programming Ariel Esteban Cayer and General Manager Mathieu Li-Goyette in their mission statement. They describe a “lush vision of cinema worthy of the imagination of its artists,” a series of films navigating between liberating dreams and distressing realities, channelled through bodies and minds whose epic and intimate geographies remain to be mapped.

International programming team

The programming committee brings together critics and programmers from here and abroad: Ariel Esteban Cayer, Mathieu Li-Goyette and Olivier Thibodeau (Panorama-cinéma), Mélopée B. Montminy (24 images), Justine Smith (CultMTL, RogerEbert.com) and Filipino critic and author Richard Bolisay (Break It to Me Gently: Essays on Filipino Film). This collective curatorial framework underpins the Week’s commitment to rigorous, argumentative programming rather than market-driven selection.

Local cinema in focus

Opening night, under the banner SAILS (Monday, January 12, 6:30 pm.), positions cinema as an opening to new possibilities, with films that reveal themselves like “buried continents.” The program pairs the Canadian premiere of Helena Wittmann’s short A Thousand Waves Away (Germany, 10”) with the world premiere of Cauchemar Conseil (Canada, 148”) by Renaud Després-Larose and Ana Tapia Rousiouk (The Dream and the Radio), a dazzling, sleight-of-hand narrative in which Lucie, a PhD candidate, attempts to free herself from the physical and psychic grip of her thesis and its supervisor.

World premieres and new Canadian voices

The Critics’ Week foregrounds local cinema with several world premieres by established and emerging Canadian filmmakers.

TOWARDS ECSTASY
January 13, 6:30 pm
A program dedicated to handcrafted, feverish narratives—Olivier Godin unveils Oublie pas le gruau (Canada, 75”), a bawdy and unpredictable new fable starring Jean Marc Dalpé, alongside Whammy Alcazaren’s Water Sports (Philippines, 19”, Quebec premiere) and Caroline Golum’s Revelations of Divine Love (United States, 73”, North American premiere).

TRAVEL BUDDIES
January 14, 6:30 pm.
The festival turns its attention to male friendship and the clichés that surround it. This program counters patriarchal platitudes with more nuanced portraits, bringing together La dureté du mental by Charles-André Coderre (Canada, 20”), Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes by Gabriel Azorín (Spain/Portugal, 112”, Quebec premiere) and Lucio Castro’s Drunken Noodles (United States/Argentina, 81”, Quebec premiere).

Gender, performance and screens

TELENOVELA
January 15, 6:30 pm
Telenovela explores the performative pressures exerted by accessible cameras, 24-hour streams and social media. Through Julia Mellen’s Abortion Party (Spain, 13”, Quebec premiere), Amanda Kramer’s By Design (United States, 91”, Canadian premiere) and MACDO by Racornelia (Mexico/Greece, 118”, Canadian premiere), the program questions what space remains for any authentic self in a world saturated with images.

LAV DIAZ AND COLONIAL HISTORIES
January 16, 2:30 pm.
A special screening is devoted to Lav Diaz’s Magellan (Philippines /Portugal /Spain /France /Taiwan, 163”). This prolific encounter between producer Albert Serra’s historical cinema and Diaz’s political realism proposes a radical retelling of Europe’s colonial narrative by reframing Magellan’s destructive encounter with the Indigenous peoples of the Philippines.

Treasure Hunt: play and form

TREASURE HUNT
January 16, 6:30 pm.
Treasure Hunt celebrates encounters under the melancholic glow of a vibrant moon and through playful formal strategies, calling on “pirates” to ready their maps.
The program features the world premiere of Nuno Pimentel’s I’m Feeling Something (Portugal, 13”), the Quebec premiere of Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc’s Bury Us in a Lone Desert (Vietnam, 62”) and the Canadian premiere of Alejo Moguillansky’s Pin de Fartie (Argentina, 106”).

Filipino focus and Mike De Leon tribute

As part of a broader spotlight on Filipino cinema and its enduring political ethos, the festival presents a tribute to the late Mike De Leon (1947–2025).
On Saturday, January 17 at 2:30 pm., the program brings together Maria Estela Paiso’s Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky (Philippines, 11”, Canadian premiere) and the 4K restoration of De Leon’s 1981 masterpiece Kisapmata (Philippines, 99”).

At the city’s edges

AT THE CITY’S GATES (Saturday, January 17, 6:30 pm.) turns to Toronto as a site of neoliberal transformation, where protectionist policies and privatization erode older dreams of hospitality. In this double bill, Alex Lo’s Permanent Tourist (Canada, 67”, Quebec premiere) and Christopher Beaulieu’s Otium (Canada, 79”, world premiere) follow two wandering souls caught in labyrinthine, liminal spaces under the shadow of precarity.

Last Night on Earth

The short-film program LAST NIGHT ON EARTH (Sunday, January 18, 2:30 pm.) assembles five ways of saying goodbye, haunted by dwindling horizons of possibility. It includes the world premieres of Douce prisonnière by Paul Chotel and Ariane Falardeau St-Amour (Canada, 12”) and D’époques by Samuel Terry Pitre (Canada, 46”), alongside Last Evenings on Earth by Ralitsa Doncheva (Canada, 13”), 23 Thoughts About My Mother by Mike Hoolboom (Canada, 32”, Quebec premiere) and Blue Stomach by Nathan Donovan (Canada, 4”, Quebec premiere).

A powerful closing night

CLOSING NIGHT – ATRIUM (Sunday, January 18, 6:30 pm.) brings together two major documentary works on displacement and dispossession.
Qui vit encore by Swiss filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff (Switzerland /France /Palestine, 113”, North American premiere) gathers the testimonies of Palestinian exiles as they rehearse a play on genocide, while Robert Morin’s Six portraits néoréalistes (Canada, 75”, world premiere) chronicles the daily lives of six African migrants in Rome, interrogating the legacy of post-war Italian cinema in a world overrun by alienating screens.

Luc-Perreault-AQCC Prize and guests

The closing evening will also host the Luc-Perreault-AQCC Prize, an annual Canadian film award presented since 1974 by the Quebec Critics’ Association to a Quebec film deemed exemplary that year. The full list of guests and speakers for this edition will be announced on January 5, 2026.

Partners and supporters

Panorama-cinéma and the Montreal Critics’ Week acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts de Montréal, as well as their exhibition partner Cinéma du Musée.

The festival also thanks its associate partners — l’Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma (AQCC), the Goethe-Institut Montréal, the Berlin Critics’ Week (Woche der Kritik), Cégep de Saint-Laurent, Plein(s) Écran(s), Tënk Canada, Vidéographe — along with its presentation partners: 24 images, Cinémas, Hors Champ, Fugues, Liberté and Spirale.

Tickets, badges and access

Ticket prices are as follows:

Regular ticket (double or triple bills): 25$
Individual ticket (Saturday or Sunday afternoon screenings): 15$
Regular badge: 140$
Student and Elderly (65+) badges: 100$

All screenings for the 2nd Montreal Critics’ Week will take place from January 12 to 18, 2026 at Cinéma du Musée.

Information and box office

Feature image courtesy of Montreal Critics’ Week