This weekend, Mékong X Saint-Laurent will gather Southeast Asian cinema aficionados in Montreal for three days of viewings, discussions and networking. The film festival will feature several movies having either their Quebec or Canadian premiere.

Caroline Bergoin really wanted the Mékong X Saint-Laurent film festival to take place at Quebec’s premier film conservatory. “I think it sends a strong message to take space for several days at the Cinémathèque québécoise,” says the documentary producer and festival organizer. “Before, it happened in alternative venues or other places in a very spread out fashion.” Currently in its third year, the Montreal film festival, named after the rivers in Southeast Asia and Quebec, brings Southeast Asian storytelling to the province.

Organized by Super Boat People, a Quebec collective for Southeast Asians, this year’s expanded programming reflects the growing appetite for such stories on the big screen. That excitement can be seen in the selection of Jean Bùi as this year’s spokesperson. The actor played Kim Thùy’s father in Ru, the 2023 movie based on her eponymous novel and arguably the most well-known Quebec film about Southeast Asians to date. 

Motel Grand-Pré 

Calvin Liu’s entry in the festival, which will be having its Quebec premiere, has an eye-catching premise. His short documentary Motel Grand-Pré shows the daily life of the filmmaker’s own father, a Mandarin-speaking Chinese man with poor French-language skills who owns a motel in Gaspésie, a predominantly white and French-speaking region of rural Quebec. Liu grew up spending his summers and winter holidays working alongside his father at the establishment. “Every time I go to Gaspésie, I just see him interacting with very rural Quebecois people, and then they have a very strong Quebecois accent”, he says. “But my dad can almost not talk in French.” What seems to be a film about the routine life of an immigrant father from Hunan ends up telling the story of a complicated father-son relationship.

Liu, who did not come from an artistic family, feels encouraged by seeing so many other Asian filmmakers in Quebec telling their own stories. “I think it can open a lot of doors to other Asian young people, seeing this,” he says. “Oh, actually, you don’t have to be like a doctor or engineer to make something out of your life.” He himself was inspired by Vietnamese-Quebecer Carol Nguyen’s acclaimed 2019 release, No Crying at the Dinner Table.

Ran Som

A traumatic childhood home invasion inspired Cambodian-Canadian filmmaker Riche Dang to shoot Ran Som. The thriller comedy is about the kidnapping of the son of a rich Cambodian businessman by two criminals who become morally conflicted when they learn the boy suffers from brutal family abuse at home. When the film screened at different Southeast Asian film festivals in Quebec and the United States, it opened up discussions around Southeast Asian masculinity among audience members. 

“It’s a conscientious effort to decide, what parts of our masculinity are we passing on?” he says. “I love that this subject and conversation were in that direction because it’s a conversation that could continuously happen from generation to generation.” He hopes that his future films open up even more discussions within the community. “What it did for me was it kind of opened the door of what was possible within the Southeast Asian community and, you know, making films around Southeast Asian subjects,” he says, hoping to connect with Southeast Asian communities across the country moving forward. “It’s cool that, you know, when I’m making these films that it becomes part of a bigger thing, you know, it’s not just shown at a film festival, it’s taking part in conversations.”

Belonging in the Quebec film industry

First-time filmmaker Jade Giang’s horror short film No One Goes to the Movies Anymore premiered at Fantasia International Film Festival this summer, the culmination of a filmmaking journey that was not always easy. “In Quebec culture in general, I’ve never felt seen”, she says. 

The absence of representation made the Vietnamese-Quebecer director feel like an imposter when she entered the film industry. She ultimately decided to shoot her first film in English “because I don’t feel like I belong in the French Québécois industry.” This, however, is something she hopes to change in the future. “I can say that I belong, you know, and actually make things in French to make a place for French-speaking Asian Quebecers,” she says. “So it’s definitely something that I keep in mind for my future projects.” 

She believes that there is a mismatch between the Southeast Asian stories the Quebec film industry wants and those the community itself wants to tell. “A lot of films, like Ru for example, touch specifically on being Southeast Asian,” she says. “Yes, those films are super important. But I think we can talk about themes that don’t touch directly on Southeast Asian or Asian diasporic themes, but that can still have Asian characters in it, because we’re not only one identity.”

Bergoin really hopes the festival inspires the next generation of Southeast Asian filmmakers in Quebec. “I’m really thinking of the young people. To be a movie producer, develop projects, get in the system of grants, to see how long it takes … it is not true that everyone starts at the same place,” she says. “I really encourage them to come to the festival. Because to create cinema, you need to watch a lot of movies to be inspired. The advantage of a festival is also to meet directors who will be present. So it is an opportunity for the youth to talk to them and create a community.”