Fog in February

On the eve of the publication of a biography of Claude Jutra, Quebec’s and Canada’s most celebrated filmmaker, a media leak divulges that the book contains allegations of paedophile acts perpetrated by the long-late filmmaker. In early February 2016, the rumour spread like lightning, suddenly igniting the whole of Quebec political and civil society. In a collective and unprecedented rush to judgement and cleansing away of history, Jutra’s name and lifetime work were erased from the public sphere even as no formal legal proceeding was ever recorded during his life. The sequence of events that punctuate the “Jutra Affair” takes a close look both at what it reveals of the collective unconscious and the self imposed silence which to this day persists. In Fog in February, producer-director Jean-Claude Coulbois now dissects the multiple layers that enfold this dark affair and asserts its ongoing relevance in our societies at large.