COEUR DE MADAME SABALI, LE

Jeannette is fed up with trying to reignite the interest of her boyfriend, who hasn’t touched her in two years. She decides to leave him, yielding to the advances made by a co-worker at the bus station where she works. But life has a few surprises in store... First, the co-worker in question soon proves to be her half-brother. Then Jeannette receives a long-awaited phone call informing her that a donor has been found for her heart transplant: a Malian woman who had been brutally murdered. Following the operation, the woman’s son Chibale becomes convinced that Jeannette has become his reincarnated mother. After The First Winter and a number of noteworthy shorts (Bon Voyage, Chinatown), Manitoban filmmaker Ryan McKenna brings together Marie Brassard, Francis  La Haye and Youssef Camara (not to mention singers Amadou & Mariam!) in this vibrantly tinted tragicomedy that flirts with the fantastic. Evoking both the elegance of a Wes Anderson flick and the deadpan humour of recent Scandinavian offerings, Le cœur de Madame Sabali makes the heart in its every incarnation the very object of its tender and original gaze.