Ghost Town Anthology

The backwater village of Irénée-les-Neiges somewhere in Quebec is shaken by the death of 21-year-old Simon. The pragmatic mayor objects to the arrival of a psychologist – she believes the reclusive community with its modest population of 215 can cope on its own. But the opposite is true: the frigid days drag on forever, the old order has become unsustainable, and mysterious figures are slowly emerging from the fog. Things that seem strange and incomprehensible, though, can sometimes be based in things more familiar than we might wish. This melancholic and witty, poetic and political film by Québécois director Denis Côté takes advantage of the traditional iconography of ghost films to tell a metaphorical tale of our fear of what is “different”.