news | Monday September 9, 2013

Tom à la ferme wins Best Film Prize at Venice Film Festival

Xavier Dolan

Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s latest film, Tom à la ferme, has won the International Federation of Film Critics’ best film prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The film is an adaptation of Tom at the Farm, a play by Michel Marc Bouchard, who worked with Dolan to adapt the script to the screen.

In an interview with Dolan published in the National Post, the twenty-four-year-old “wunderkind” said that “the people were moved” by his film about a young man, Tom, who travels to the country to attend the funeral of his lover, Guillaume.

Paranoia spreads on the farm as Tom discovers that Guillaume’s family is unaware of the two men’s relationship, let alone Guillaume’s sexuality. Threatened by Guillaume’s suspicious older brother, Tom creates a fake girlfriend in order to stay on at the farm.

But despite Tom’s identity confusion, Dolan told the Canadian Press that homosexuality “is not the heart of the film.”

“It’s really a film about violence and intolerance, the growing chasm between men from the city and men from the country, about grief, lying and how people lie to themselves,” said Dolan, whose next stop is the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

For more coverage of Tom a la ferme at the TIFF, see here