Hochelaga, Land of Souls

On a summer night a sinkhole opens during a football game in a downtown Montreal stadium, revealing long-buried artifacts beneath. Archeologist Baptiste Asigny (Samian) and a research team believe they are on the brink of linking the site to the Iroquois village of Hochelaga, the probable location of the meeting between Jacques Cartier and the Iroquois people in 1535. Weaving together past and present, the film visits and revisits Hochelaga through the centuries. Girard takes us back to the village in 1267, centuries before it was colonized; to the arrival of Cartier (Vincent Perez) and its violent disruptions; to a deadly epidemic that hit a young Montreal in 1687; to the turmoil of the Lower Canada Rebellion in 1837; to a pioneering moment in neurology in 1944. (Toronto International Film Festival)