Réalisatrices.teurs

Martine Gignac

Martine Gignac graduated from the “L’Art du Montage” (“The Art of Montage/ Editing”) college program at the School of Cinema and Video Trades (ÉMCV). Equally a graduate of the Institute of Image and Sound (INIS), she has won the Louise-Spickler Excellence Fellowship for the Feature Film Writing program. She directed her first short fiction film “La Vocation”, winning the Quebec Audiovisual Training Network (RFAVQ) competition. The same year, she completed her first feature documentary "NOUS, les femmes qu’on ne sait pas voir". In addition to her professional career, Martine had been a nun in the Notre-Dame-du-Saint-Rosaire community for 9 years.

Productions

• The Praying

Claudie Simard

Through her documentary filmmaking, Claudie Simard is blazing new trails. Her years as a journalist have shaped her curiosity and empathy, which she now channels into the arts. Her first auteur documentary, Resilience in Midwifery, was a finalist for the 2023 Prix Gémeaux. Committed to women’s rights, she explores assisted reproduction in the documentary series Births of the Future, which garnered significant public attention, notably on the national TV show Tout le monde en parle and in La Presse. In 2024, she directed her first international shoot for the documentary Take me Along, which aired on Ami-Télé and Radio-Canada. An experienced communicator, she enjoys debating the topics that inspire her and addressing them with nuance.

Productions

• Take me Along
• Births of the Future
• Resilience in Midwifery

Karine Lamontagne

Karine Lamontagne approaches documentary filmmaking with great sensitivity and a strong interest in human stories. She favors narratives grounded in local realities, where people, context, and territory are inseparable. Originally from Abitibi and now based in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, Karine has a deep sense of belonging to the region and its social fabric. This close relationship with place directly informs her perspective and the projects she develops. With a solid background in the industry, she brings a critical eye and a nuanced understanding of the mechanics of production as a whole, which she puts at the service of a rigorous, sensitive, and engaged documentary approach.

Productions

• The Butcheress of Trois-Pistoles

Benoit Ouellet

A native of Rivière-du-Loup in Quebec’s Bas St-Laurent region, Benoit Ouellet made his first contact with cinematographic production at Rivière-du-Loup College. He then studied at the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi for an interdisciplinary baccalaureate in arts with film profile and completed his bachelor's degree in cinema with a specialization in direction of photography at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

Following his studies, Benoit built his professional experience at various film sets in addition to carrying out his own creative projects. Amongst other ventures, he has worked in corporate video productions, where his creativity and scriptwriting proposals stand out. After some of his films were presented at international festivals, Benoit returned to his hometown, Rivière-du-Loup, to practice his art there. In 2020, he founded Fanfare agence créative and has multiplied achievements in television and cinema, in addition to ensuring the DOP and the editing of several projects through this venture. Benoit’s most recent short film, L’amour, took his work to North America and Europe. As such, Benoit remains dedicated to his ongoing video projects, all while teaching at Rivière-du-Loup School of Cinema and Video Trades (École des métiers du cinéma et de la vidéo du Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup).

Productions

• Coureurs de courses
• Cinéma d’ici
• Hotel Central
• And What does it Change?

Étienne Denis

A native of Rivière-du-Loup, Étienne Denis has studied communication, scriptwriting and lighting before committing to a career behind the camera. Since 2011, he has worked as a lighting technician and gaffer on numerous fictional film sets, including Plan B, Chien de garde, Faits divers, La chute de l’empire américain, Phénix, Les CruesIn 2019, Étienne returned to his native Lower St-Lawrence region in order to invest his experience and creative eye into regional productions, all while exploring the realization of various television projects (magazine shows and documentaries). Since 2024, he has served as director of the Vues dans la tête de… festival, in Rivière-du-Loup.

Productions

• Chronicles of a Ferry
• The Hare and the Sea
• The Langlais Cottage
• Pestacle
• 40%

Hugo Latulippe

Author, filmmaker and producer, Hugo Latulippe has been a well-known figure in Quebec documentary cinema for the past 25 years. After his studies in cinema, Hugo has travelled the world with Radio Canada's La Course destination monde. Received as "artist-resident" at the Culture and Experimentation Studio (Studio culture et expérimentation) of the National Film Board of Canada, Hugo has learned his profession from the masters and artisans of Quebec’s direct cinema.

Several of Hugo’s films have been selected in the most prestigious festivals and have won numerous distinctions in Quebec and around the world. In 2005, Hugo founded the Montreal-based documentary production company esperamos, whose TV, web and cinema projects focus on "the important social questions of our time".

From 2014 to 2019, Hugo has chaired the Documentary Network (Observatoire du Documentaire), which brings together the main professional associations and institutions that produce documentaries in Canada. Hugo has also served on several national and international juries and he occasionally teaches documentary cinema at INIS (Montreal) and various other colleges and universities. From 2023 to 2025, he served as director of the FCVQ, the Quebec City Film Festival. He has lived in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region since 2017.

Productions

• The Happiness Quest

Stéphane Lahoud

After studying film at Concordia University, Stéphane Lahoud quickly turned to documentary filmmaking, a medium he views as a tool for both observation and social transformation. In 2002, he co-founded the collective Les Lucioles. Since then, he has directed more than thirty short films with a sociopolitical focus, screened at festivals in Québec and abroad. His short film On the Ice Floe was broadcast on Radio-Canada and featured on theNational Film Board of Canada’s digital platform. His most recent documentary series, Laurentian Objectives, is a finalist at the 40ᵉ Prix Gémeaux (2025) in the category Best Documentary Series: Health, Nature, Science and Environment..

Productions

• Laurentian Objectives
• On the Ice Floe

Guillaume Lévesque

Originally from the Matapedia Valley, Guillaume Lévesque is the son of a simple woodcutter. It is by watching the great men, manipulating the trees to cut them down, saw them, that Guillaume has forged an imagery. Very early in his process, he felt the need to express himself on his territory, the people that live there. Losing land (2005), is a documentary on the harmful impacts of the tourist industry of the Magdalen Islands. Gaspesia (2010), presents essays on the territory the relationship between the Gaspé and its inhabitants. Also inspired by the behavior of the human being at the end of life, Guillaume takes a look at old age by interviewing three elderly people in Before Winter (2008). It was at L'INIS in the winter of 2010, as a student in the documentary program that he created Ritual, a film that questions funeral rituals in transformation. In 2012, it presents A shoveling after the other, a tribute to the winter through the portrait of a village "pelleteux". In 2017 Guillaume offers Lawrence’s silence, a documentary portrait of singer-songwriter Lawrence Lepage; poet and man of territory who chose the silence of the forest rather than the spotlight of the scene.

Productions

• La nouvelle chasse
• Seal à la Carte
• From the Sea to the Menu

Mathieu Baer

Mathieu Baer has produced and directed everything from live comedy and variety shows to ground-breaking documentaries and original kids programming. Mat started out as a news journalist for SRC, Canada’s national public broadcaster. He then quickly evolved into a highly successful television producer and director. He has worked with several broadcasters and producers including Just For Laughs, HBO, CBC, Bell Media and NBC’s Seeso network.

His documentaries touch upon a wide variety of subjects from the state of the news in Canada to the difficulties of transitioning at a young age to mastery in art, architecture, classical music and being a chef. Mathieu writes, directs and produces in both French and English.

Julien Boisvert

With a committed and political approach, filmmaker Julien Boisvert challenges dominant narratives through works characterized by a resolutely candid and playful tone. This dissonance between intentions and means runs through his entire body of work, breaking away from rigid, binary thinking. Julien enjoys blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, reflection and humor, and the viewer and the actor.

Productions

• Overcoming Image
• How I Fell
• Sponsor a Wealthy Child

Julie Gauthier

Julie Gauthier has been a scenarist of fiction material for many years. In the Summer of 2013, she directed Vidéodep, her first short, with Tapis Rouge Films. With collegial studies in Media Languages, she turned towards Literature at the University of Quebec in Rimouski. Her master’s in Literary Creation allowed her to explore literary adaptation while working on a monument of Quebec literature, Hubert Aquin’s Neige Noire. She organised the first Kino evenings in Rimouski, and hosted them for 5 years.

Productions

• Amazons
• Vidéodep