Cinema
Orders
Les Ordres
Michel Brault · 1974
Synopsis
October 1970. After the kidnapping of a British diplomat and a Quebec minister, Ottawa invokes the War Measures Act. Nearly five hundred people are arrested at home, often at night, without warrant or charge. We follow five of them: a unionised worker and his wife, a doctor, a social worker, an unemployed man. In prison, no one tells them why they are there; to every question, the guards answer that they have orders.
Context
The film is based on the testimonies of some fifty former detainees. At the start, the actors introduce themselves under their own names before entering their characters, and the image shifts from black and white to colour. Jean Lapointe and Hélène Loiselle play the couple, Guy Provost the doctor, Louise Forestier the social worker and Claude Gauthier the unemployed man. The screenplay was published by L'Aurore in 1975, and a restored version has been distributed since 2024.
Who it is for
A hundred and seven minutes, in Quebec French; a sober reconstruction, between fiction and testimony, of a dark page in Canadian history.
Prizes and reception
Best Director prize at Cannes, shared with Costa-Gavras, and three Etrog awards: feature film, direction and original screenplay.
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