Director Philippe Falardeau’s stealth visit to Toronto this past weekend to attend two warmly received afternoon screenings of his world-premiering “Lovely Day,” an acquisition title, left little time for the acclaimed Canadian director of 2012 Oscar-nominated “Monsieur Lazhar” to chat.
Thanks to Falardeau’s sore throat and rapidly disappearing voice, all media interviews were cancelled, save a conversation with Variety, during which he revealed he came close to cancelling production on his new film last fall in the middle of shooting the wedding scenes – with full cast and extras on deck – when news arrived that Israel was conducting airstrikes in Lebanon.
Adapted from Montreal writer (also screenplay co-writer) Alain Farah’s 2021 autobiographical novel “Mille secrets mille dangers,” the Montreal-set comedic family drama follows Alain (Neil Elias) – a second generation Lebanese Canadian writer with long-divorced parents, clinical anxiety, and a bowel disease – through everyday obstacles and mounting existential concerns on the day of his wedding to Virginie (Rose-Marie Perreault) in the historic Saint Joseph’s Oratory on the city’s scenic pinnacle Mount Royal.
“I arrived on set in the morning and the Lebanese cast members have long faces because they haven’t slept,” Falardeau said, in his first interview about the film. “They were on the phone with relatives in Lebanon, trying to figure out who’s still alive and who has to move. And then I’m asking them to shoot a silly wedding scene? It felt wrong.”
But Lebanon-based Hiam Abou Chedid, who plays Alain’s mother, told Falardeau the film was exactly what she and the other Lebanese cast members needed. “She said ‘We need to feel that life is going on, we need to participate in something that is not political because our life is always political.’
“They all told me they wanted to be involved in art that doesn’t deal with war in the Middle East to show the rest of the world that the war does not define them.”
A few days before his flight to Montreal, Lebanese actor Georges Khabbaz, star of Ameer Fakher Eldin’s 2025 Berlin competition film “Yunan,” was in Beirut doing a play when Falardeau called.
“I said, ‘George, what’s going to happen if the airport closes?’ and he said, ‘I’m going to take a boat to Cyprus, and I’ll take a plane from there,’ and he was very calm,” Falardeau said.
“I strongly felt I should be doing a politically engaged film, not this comedy about anxiety, but they reassured me I should carry on.”
The film is produced by Kim McCraw and Luc Déry of Montreal micro_scope; their company’s new international division holds world rights outside of Canada. Anick Poirier, a renowned sales executive at Seville and Sphere International, is leading sales. Les Films Opale and Entract will co-distribute in Canada.
“This is an important movie for us, and we are eager to see the reactions out of Toronto,” Déry told Variety ahead of the festival.
Falardeau may have an answer. Known for working closely with local communities when telling immigrant stories such as “Lazhar,” “The Good Lie” and other films, the director said it’s taken Quebec a while to have real diversity in cinema and television but it’s happening now.
“We need to start casting our actors in any kind of role – the ex-girlfriend, the director of a bank,” he said. “A woman at the screening this afternoon told me she was born in Canada but her parents are immigrants from Italy, and she felt like she was watching an Italian film about marriage.
“This is why I think we hit the nail on the head with this story about second generation immigrants, no matter what the community people are going to recognize themselves.”
