Richelieu

Working as a French-to-Spanish interpreter at a corn plant in the Richelieu Valley Quebec, Ariane (Ariane Castellanos) befriends Manuel (Marc-Andre Grondin), a migrant worker who’s left a family behind in Guatemala in search of better pay. Ariane begins to witness the abuse felt by the Spanish-speaking labourers. She’s forced to choose between turning a blind eye to protect her own job and standing up for the humanity of her fellow workers.

Drawing from neo-realist traditions, beautifully photographed and elegantly constructed, Richelieu paints an undeniable portrait of a crisis unfolding across North America. Director Pier-Philippe Chevigny avoids didacticism and delivers an assured, emotionally resonant first feature which announces the arrival of a new Canadian talent.

A movie can entertain the audience or move people, but it can also be used as a political tool to denounce the injustices that plague our world. That’s the case in Pier-Philippe Chevigny’s Richelieu, a devastating movie about how immigrant workers are exploited by first world companies that can’t abuse the citizens of their own countries quite so easily… Thanks to the convergence of a solid script, tight direction, and heartbreaking performances, Richelieu stands apart as a drama about the state of modern labor. While the message might be put ahead of the story sometimes, this is still an essential movie to better understand how the invisible chains of production govern our everyday lives.

Marco Vito Oddo, Collider

A big success… an important film from which we come away better informed in addition to having had an excellent time at the cinema.

Audrey-Anne Blaise, La Presse