Cross My Heart

Montreal, 1970. The radical left-wing nationalist group ‘Front de libération du Québec’ has forced the province into a state of emergency, and meanwhile the twelve-year-old Manon looks on helplessly as her family falls apart. Her father is ill and because her mother is unable to cope, she is forced to give up her children to separate foster families. However, Manon has sworn to her younger brother Mimi that she will never leave him alone, and so she hatches a daring plan: She forms a revolutionary group with her cousins and kidnaps an unsuspecting grandma. They demand home-made cakes, bedtime stories, and above all that they are allowed to live the way they want to. In a remote cabin, they spend their days enjoying their new-found freedom – far from the ignorance of the grown-up world. (Berlinale)