Montreal's insomnia becomes your midnight fever dream.
Black and white images shot at night. A camera roams the streets of Montreal in search of sounds, smells and sensations. From the first frame, NIGHTS stakes its ground as a poetic, nomadic experience, an open-ended essay about the countless inner worlds that inhabit the big-city night. Testimonials and confessions gradually emerge, from a photographer to a truck driver, from a baker to a blind woman who had to learn to “see” the world differently. Their experiences overlap, but are unalike. We have the feeling of living different lives, against the grain of normality, and we are not alone in this. Diane Poitras achieves nothing less than the reconstitution of a parallel community.
Cinematography
Shadow-drenched Montreal streets become living charcoal sketches.
Sound
Night sounds orchestrated into accidental symphonies.
Direction
Poitras turns documentary into lucid nocturnal wandering.
Director
Diane Poitras
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
NIGHTS belongs to a rich tradition of 'city symphony' documentaries, but replaces the celebratory modernism of MANHATTAN with something more melancholic and intimate.
Poitras spent years filming before finding her subjects, suggesting the film's structure emerged from genuine nocturnal immersion rather than predetermined thesis. The baker, truck driver, and blind woman were encountered, not cast.
FR
CA
