Synopsis
Since 2010, Parthenais has held within its walls the life of a whole queer community. They are gay, lesbian, trans, and they live together in Centre-Sud in the heart of Montreal, in a triplex that is falling apart. Between the parties that sometimes welcome more than two hundred people until the wee hours of the morning, the collective dinners, the great joys and the small despairs, this old flat has transformed the lives of its tenants. Twelve years later, the building is bought by a wealthy family who wants to live there, gentrification being the order of the day. This marks the end of a mythical space that has transformed Montreal’s queer scene for a decade. The boxes are too small to contain all the stories that have taken place within these walls. Eviction is the story of this turning page, as the distraught residents search for a new place to call home in the midst of a housing crisis and land speculation.
A word from Tënk
Evictions have multiple destructive effects. One of this film’s great strengths is how it reveals the ways they impact a city’s social fabric, disrupting different communities — here, Montreal’s queer community. Offering an insider’s perspective, Mathilde Capone sets their camera on the microcosm of people who live in, pass through, and gather around this apartment, highlighting the importance and meaning of a unique space now lost.
The film captures and conveys both individual and collective voices through an intimate, collaborative approach that reflects the real relationship between those behind and in front of the camera — a relationship that allows everyone to speak, exist, and be seen freely and with trust. Joy, anger, sadness, hope and despair punctuate this film, which radiates a deep sense of solidarity and reminds us of the urgent need to resist and defend the conditions necessary to sustain a plural, inclusive Montreal — one that truly enriches the broader community.
Hubert Sabino-Brunette
Programmer and teacher
