A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in Who By Fire (Comme le feu) a disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis). 

Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) and his longtime friend and former collaborator Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), the vacation gradually becomes something far more complex and less stable, especially with the combustible admixture of Albert’s teen son’s best friend, Jeff (Noah Parker), and Albert’s self-asserting daughter Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Long-simmering middle-aged resentments surface, set against the anxieties of the young, all captured sensitively by Lesage, who knows how to explore the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes.

Featuring a series of thrillingly choreographed dinner sequences replete with mounting tension, Who by Fire confirms Lesage as a major contemporary filmmaker, and at one point, stages a surprising (and hilariously plot-relevant) group dance to the B-52s’s “Rock Lobster.” This remarkable film is an intense intimate drama and also a beautifully observed study of masculine ego, artistic pretension, and the disillusionment that comes when meeting one’s idols, where anything can happen at any given moment.

Winner of the Berlin Film Festival Grand Prix of the International Jury in the Generation 14plus competition.