Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette (born 1979) is a Canadian novelist, film director, and screenwriter from Quebec. Her films are known for their "organic, participatory feel." Barbeau-Lavalette is the daughter of filmmaker Manon Barbeau and cinematographer Philippe Lavalette, and the granddaughter of artist Marcel Barbeau.
Originally prominent as a child actor, her credits included the series Le Club des 100 Watts and À nous deux!. She later began making documentary films, including Les Petits princes des bidonvilles (2000), Buenos Aires, no llores (2001) and Si j'avais un chapeau (2005), before releasing her first feature film, The Ring, in 2007. In 2010, she also published Je voudrais qu'on m'efface (translated as Neighbourhood Watch), a novel which revolves around some of the same characters as The Ring. In 2015, her second novel, La femme qui fuit (translated as Suzanne), inspired by the life of her grandmother, artist Suzanne Meloche, was short-listed for the 2016 Governor General's Award for French-language fiction, in addition to winning a number of other prizes and being a best-seller.
Barbeau-Lavalette is best known to international audiences for her award-winning 2012 film Inch'Allah.
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Early life
Barbeau-Lavalette was born on February 8, 1979, in Montreal, the daughter of Manon Barbeau, a filmmaker and director, and Philippe Lavalette, a cinematographer. She is the granddaughter of the Canadian artist Marcel Barbeau, who studied under Paul-Émile Borduas, and is known for being one of the first non-figurative painters in Canada.
As a young adult, Barbeau-Lavalette lived and studied in the occupied West Bank area.
In 2000, after finishing her first full-length documentary, Les Petits princes des bidonvilles (2000), Barbeau-Lavalette enrolled at the Université de Montréal, where she majored in International Studies. She then went on to study Film Production at the INIS. Following her time at INIS, Barbeau-Lavalette travelled to Ramallah, Palestine to attend Birzeit University.
Film career
Documentaries
Barbeau-Lavalette started her film career as a documentary director. Following a year spent in Honduras, Barbeau-Lavalette directed Les Petits princes des bidonvilles (2000), which followed young Hondurans growing up in Montreal. In 2002, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette represented Canada in the United Nations Volunteers' Odyssey (Odyssée du voluntarist), in which she traveled the world creating 15 short documentaries on the theme of volunteerism.
On her return, Barbeau-Lavalette directed more documentaries, including the features Si j'avais un chapeau (2005), which detailed the lives of children across four different countries, and Tap-Tap, a "poetic portrait of Montreal's Haitian community."
Fiction features
In 2007, her debut fiction The Ring came out and was received warmly by critics. Her second fiction feature film, Inch'Allah, has become her most recognizable piece of work.
Her 2020 film, Goddess of the Fireflies (La déesse des mouches à feu), is an adaptation of the novel by Geneviève Pettersen.
In 2022, she released White Dog (Chien blanc), an adaptation of Romain Gary's 1970 novel White Dog.
Short films
Barbeau-Lavalette has created many short films spanning across different mediums and genres. Barbeau-Lavalette directed and shot 15 documentary short films during her time with the United Nations' Volunteers' Odyssey, and has continued to release short films throughout her career.
Her filmography includes such short films as Seven Hours Three Times A Year (2012), Ina Litovski (2012), and an 11-minute animated short film, Take Me (2014).
Videoclips
Barbeau-Lavalette is part of the Wapikoni Mobile audiovisual adventure. Through this Barbeau-Lavalette has directed videoclips for musicians, including Canadian singers Catherine Major and Thomas Hellman and hip hop artists Samian and Dramatik.
Themes
Freedom and women's emancipation
In her best-selling book La femme qui fuit (Suzanne, 2015), Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette recounts the story of her grandmother, who abandoned her children. The quest for freedom and the difficulty of escaping social and family constraints are central themes in the work. Women's emancipation is explored through Suzanne Meloche, who chose to flee in order to live according to her own choices.[1]
Nos Héroïnes (2018) is a children's book illustrated by Mathilde Cinq-Mars, which features forty portraits of women who were members of Quebec's first women's sports club, the Club des archères de Montréal. In secret, these passionate, free-spirited, and strong women would meet near Sainte-Catherine Street in Montreal, and the book explores the freedom and emancipation of women through these forgotten figures. Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette explains that she wanted to bring female role models to the Quebec landscape so that younger generations could use these portraits as inspiration, and at the same time enable the creation of a more equitable and representative society.
Childhood and youth
Le Ring (The ring, 2007) is Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette's first feature film. It portrays a 12-year-old boy living in a disadvantaged neighborhood of Montreal. Through the child, the director also symbolizes themes such as loneliness, street violence, and the loss of innocence.
Les petits géants (2008) is a documentary co-directed with Émile Proulx-Cloutier filmed in Montreal elementary schools, focusing on children experiencing family or school difficulties.
Inch'Allah (2012) is a feature-length fiction film largely inspired by the documentary techniques acquired by the director. The film is set in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and features Chloé, a young doctor from Quebec who lives in Jerusalem and works in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank.
La déesse des mouches à feu (2020) is an adaptation of the novel by Geneviève Pettersen. It follows Catherine, played by Kelly Depeault, a teenager in the 1990s in Chicoutimi. Rebellious adolescence, sexuality, friendship, and rebuilding are the main themes of the film.