Antigone ( Sophie Deraspe, 2019)

Awards and nominations:  won five Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Motion Picture, at the 8th Canadian Screen Awards in 2020. It was also selected as the Canadian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Synopsis

A contemporary adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy, Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone (Nahéma Ricci) is a brilliant and resolute 16-year-old Algerian-born woman in Montreal willing to sacrifice everything she has built to save one of her brothers, who has turned to crime, from deportation. Deraspe employs the universal story as a bold, elegant backdrop to an incisive critique of present-day racism and the justice system’s underlying codes while using explosive narrative methods to build tension and emotional load and climactic showdowns. As Antigone devises and acts out her outrageous plan to save her brother, a social media frenzy carries her quest from an act to a movement. Antigone is a cri-du-coeur that swings big and hits at every turn, and an unabashedly emotional film to contrast some of the quieter approaches in this series. Ricci gives a staggering performance and carries an undeniable emotional charge, and Deraspe establishes herself as one of the most interesting filmmakers of recent years.