In 2014, the movie « Mommy » directed by Xavier Dolan, got the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This was a great achievement for this director prodigy from Quebec, who had just turned 25. The script - a tumultuous relationship between a single mother and his hyperactive and violent son - and the bold direction electrified the audience. Shot in Montreal, the documentary by Tessa Louise Salomé tells the genesis of this family drama. It also reveals the failures of the society in Quebec : the failure of the mental institution and the impoverishment of the middle class.

Il était une fois... Mommy

In the work of Jack Garfein - Holocaust survivor, theater and film director, key figure in the formation of the Actors Studio - past and and present freely intermingled to contribute to memorable stage productions and in two films, many which were ahead of their time in tackling such issues as homosexuality, race and violence. Powered by his vivid recollections and augmented with readings by Willem Dafoe, The Wild One traces Garfein’s life: his Czechoslovakian youth, his family’s fleeing the Nazis, surviving in Auschwitz and other camps, his 1946 arrival at 16 in New York and coming under the wing of Lee Strasberg, Hollywood, his marriage to actress Carroll Baker.