Film Review | "C'est ma sœur"  A day in June

The Québecois filmmaker Zoé Pelchat makes a powerful statement for sisterly solidarity with her second Berlinale contribution, "C'est ma sœur", and finds a promising cinematic language to express it. 

For filmmakers from Quebec, the Berlinale's Generation section is familiar territory: In 2024, Philippe Lesage won the award for best film in the 14plus category with Comme le feu, and Geneviève Dulude-de Celles, who is in competition this year with her film Nina Roza, won the Crystal Bear in the Kplus category in 2019 for her first feature film, A Colony.

Once again, a filmmaker from Quebec is presenting a film in the short-film program 2 in the 14plus category this year: Zoé Pelchat is represented here for the second time already, this year with her short film C'est ma sœur. In 2023, she presented Gaby les collines in Generation Kplus. The film, which was screened in Toronto after the Berlinale and won, among others, the Quebec Cinema Award for Best Short Film, is set on the picturesque Magdalen Islands in the southeast of the St. Lawrence River and tells the story of a young woman and the reactions of those around her to the physical changes associated with puberty. C'est ma sœur also deals with themes of growing up, discovering one's own body through dance, and the sometimes difficult relationships to others.

The hypocrisy of adults

The film is set on a summer day in an unspecified Quebec suburb. It tells the story of two teenage sisters, one—Camille—confident and extroverted, the other—Agathe—shy and rather insecure. Camille, played by Florence Saint-Yves, whom the director discovered on TikTok, is a young woman with Down syndrome who is preparing to audition for a semi-professional dance company. On the day of the audition, which Agathe (played by Anne Florence) is supposed to accompany Camille to, she'd actually prefer attend a party to talk to the girl she secretly has a crush on. However, their parents are unavailable, so Agathe reluctantly takes her sister on her scooter and makes a detour to the audition on the way to the party.

Unfortunately, the audition doesn't go quite as Camille had imagined. Although the company is committed to diversity, the selection committee makes it clear—albeit sheepishly—that they are more concerned with diversity of origin (i.e., skin color) than with the actual inclusion of all bodies and talents. When they try to escort the young dancer out, the normally reserved Camille loses her temper—what follows is a powerful moment of sisterly solidarity, in which the two perform Agathe's own choreography to the catchy song Premier juin (First of June) by Montreal singer-songwriter Lydia Képinski, exposing the hypocrisy of the adults.

A strong symbol of inclusion and diversity

Based on a screenplay by Léalie Ferland Tanguay and created as part of a competition, this film not only deals with issues of growing up, sisterly love and affection, in keeping with the conventions of coming-of-age films, but also criticises the hypocrisy of some so-called inclusion and diversity programmes in the cultural sector. The camera work, lighting, and colors convey great sensitivity, approaching the adolescent women with respect and tenderness, capturing details such as lovingly applied eye shadow or nervously adjusted bikinis, while keeping the dismissive adults at a distance. In doing so, they emphasize the closeness and complicity of the two sisters, whose differences are explained more by their different temperaments than by medical diagnoses. C'est ma sœur sends a strong message of inclusion and diversity, as well as the normalization of being different.

A Reckoning with the Parents’ Generation

The other films in the program deal with themes that are also found in other sections of the festival, such as the question of the compromises one is willing to make in order to belong, the acceptance of one's own queerness, and the relationship to family and origins. Interestingly, in none of the five films in this section, which focus on the relationship to the land and nature, to grandparents, to the community, and to ancestry, do the parents of the young protagonists play a role—they are boring and add nothing to the story, according to Emanuele Tresca, director of the Italian short film Mambo Kids. It seems as if the young filmmakers are turning away in disappointment from a parent generation whose consumerist behavior comes at the expense of empathy and nature, and as if they are seeking meaning instead in connecting with the wisdom of their elders. This is impressively portrayed, for example, in the short film Jülapüin Yonna by Colombian director Luzbeidy Monterrosa about the indigenous Wayuu people.

Factory birthdays

An unexpected but recurring theme at this year's Berlinale is factory birthdays, which can be found in both Angela Schanelec's Meine Frau weint and Kilian Armando Friedrich's Ich verstehe ihren Unmut. This short film program also included a contribution in which a birthday is celebrated at work—namely in Scorching by Wang Beidi. This brings us back to Lydia Képinski's Premier juin and the line from the song: “Aujourd'hui c'est mon anniversaire / Ce que je n'ai pas fait je vais le faire” (Today is my birthday / What I haven't done, I will do). With this catchy tune on our minds, we head back out into the Berlin winter, which, despite the unexpected snowfall, is not quite as cold as winter in Canada, and with delayed trains, we have no choice but to dream of warm June days in joyful anticipation of the upcoming films by Zoé Pelchat, one of the filmmakers from Quebec to keep an eye on in the future.

February 2026