Le Dernier des Franco-Ontariens

In his native village of Fauquier, in northern Ontario, poet Pierre Albert organises a big party, a Last Show, to celebrate the forever anticipated death of the last of the Franco-Ontarians. 

What testamentary shout will the well-known artists he has invited summon? Will Antoine, his father, and the rest of the community rally behind this crazy project? Like many Franco-Ontarians, Antoine Albert has had to fight hard to provide for his family and he’s worlds away from Pierre's concerns. In fact, like many others, he has never chosen to define himself as Franco-Ontarian. Be that as it may, the Spectre, a playful character and the true embodiment of the Franco-Ontarian collective consciousness, has decided to help the poet in his own inimitable way. 

At the dawn of the 21st century, economic, social, political and ecological crises are calling everything into question, even the very future of our civilisation. Doubt is everywhere. Yet minorities of all kinds have always been champions of doubt. Those that survive have learned to take advantage of the creative and beneficial tensions it generates, while avoiding the harmful consequences of its corrosive acids. They also know that it is in the nature of large metropolises to wither away and that renewal inevitably comes from the margins.

Part of a rich tradition of collective creation in French Ontario, Le Dernier des Franco-Ontariens is a film that is at once fascinating and disconcerting, poetic and zany, woven from scenes where desolation and simplicity lend the images a strange and surprising beauty. First, there are the oversized chimneys - grotesque industrial ruins or warning markers? Then there are the rails, the tracks - where do they lead? Finally, the two bridges - what do they connect under this vast sky?
 
Once Pierre Albert's playground, the space between these bridges becomes the setting for his metaphysical reflections and also where he invites artists and the people of Fauquier to the Last Franco-Ontarian Show. Dominating the stage clumsily erected by the Spectre is a cross. Is this a symbol of the immolation of a people, of an identity?
 
Pierre Albert bares his soul in this deeply moving film. “Often, the last Franco-Ontarian feels like he is living his life as if in a film: the past, the present and the future all at once. Above all, it’s a film of subliminal messages. He tries to interpret, he searches for meaning, he searches for reasons to believe.”

Le Dernier des Franco-Ontariens does not seek to illustrate a thesis, but rather to give shape to an intuition, to embody, via an original visual and aural universe, a new vision of the role of minorities in a sensitive and engaging way. A true blend of documentary, fiction and performance, the film goes well beyond the portrait of an individual and the examination of a poetic work by inventing an approach and a cinematic spectacle that is as seductive as it is disturbing.