Mon oncle Antoine

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Mon oncle Antoine

Directed by	Claude Jutra
Produced by	Marc Beaudet
Written by	Claude Jutra Clément Perron
Starring	Jacques Gagnon Jean Duceppe Olivette Thibault Lionel Villeneuve Claude Jutra
Music by	Jean Cousineau
Cinematography	Michel Brault
Editing by	Claire Boyer Claude Jutra
Distributed by	National Film Board of Canada Janus Films
Release date(s)	November 12, 1971
Running time	104 min
Country	Canada
Language	French
Budget	CDN$750,000
IMDb profile

Mon oncle Antoine is a 1971 National Film Board of Canada (Office national du film du Canada) French drama film. Québécois director Claude Jutra co-wrote the screenplay with Clément Perron and directed what is one of the most acclaimed works in Canadian film history.

The film examines life in the Maurice Duplessis-era Asbestos region of rural Québec prior to the Asbestos Strike of the late 1940s. Set at Christmas time, the story is told from the point of view of a 15 year-old boy (Benoit, played by Jacques Gagnon) coming of age in a mining town. The Asbestos Strike is regarded by Québec historians as a seminal event that led to the Quiet Revolution. Jutra's film, thus, is viewed as an examination of the social conditions in Québec's old, agrarian, conservative and cleric dominated society that gave birth to the dramatic social and political changes that transformed the province a decade later.

[edit] Critical acclaim

The film has twice been voted the greatest Canadian film ever in the Sight & Sound poll, which is conducted once each decade. It has been voted TIFF List of Canada's Top Ten Films of All Time 3 out of 3 times.

This film has been designated and preserved as a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada’s audio-visual heritage. [1]