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Denis Côté Interview (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear)

A still from Vic + Flo Saw a Bear where two unclothed women are in a dimly lit room's bed, one seated at the head and the other lying perpendicular closer to the foot. A lamp is on beside the bed.

Denis Côté is a Québécois filmmaker whose films focus on outsider figures and communities, the violence that can exist between the two and the blending of genres and styles. He has won the Best Director prize twice at Locarno for Elle veut le chaos (2008) and Curling (2010), while his latest film, Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013), won the Alfred Bauer Award at Berlin.

Denis visited Toronto to introduce the theatrical run of Vic + Flo at the TIFF Lightbox and we were ecstatic to finally have the chance to chat. We met at Little Nicky’s to discuss his new film, motifs in his work, some thoughts on contemporary Québécois cinema, and the dilemmas of expanding budgets.

Our interview with Denis Côté was conducted in November of 2013 and was one of four feature interviews in the eighteenth monthly issue of The Seventh Art as a “video magazine.” It was released in February 2014.

By Christopher Heron

Christopher Heron is one of the co-founders of The Seventh Art. He's conducted over 60 long-form interviews for the publication, while also writing and cutting several numerous video essays that investigate formal traits in films and filmmakers. He received his MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, where his work explored cinematic representations of urban space with special attention paid to the films of Pedro Costa and Tsai Ming-liang.