{"id":31468,"date":"2026-08-07T20:48:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=31468"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:48:23","slug":"denis-cote-talks-dire-health-threat-inspired-nobodys-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=31468","title":{"rendered":"Denis Cote Talks Dire Health Threat Inspired Nobody\u2019s Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tCanadian auteur Denis C\u00f4t\u00e9 received a new kidney from a donor friend in August 2023, after a degenerative disease had threatened both his life and his ability to keep making movies. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d receive a transplant or dialysis, or if I\u2019d die. I had no clue what was life on the other side or whatever was upcoming,\u201d C\u00f4t\u00e9 tells <em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> ahead of the world premiere of his 17th film, <em>Nobody\u2019s Violence<\/em>, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/locarno\/\" id=\"auto-tag_locarno_1\" data-tag=\"locarno\">Locarno<\/a> Film Festival. He wrote the script for the drama \u2014 about a young woman who makes a death pact to help desperate people end their lives \u2014 during the final year of his illness, when his kidney function had dropped critically low.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe result is the film\u2019s lead character, Mira, played by Larissa Corriveau: a solitary woman of few words who let C\u00f4t\u00e9 explore what it means to live under a death threat while still holding onto hope and the possibility of changing others\u2019 lives. C\u00f4t\u00e9 has worked with Corriveau on five earlier films he wrote and directed, including another Locarno title, <em>Mademoiselle Kenopsia<\/em>, which he shot in September 2022 while battling the same progressive kidney disease.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NOBODY&amp;apos;S VIOLENCE | Official Trailer\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CbBDS5Cs8IU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<em>Nobody\u2019s Violence<\/em>, which is being shopped to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/international\/\" id=\"auto-tag_international_1\" data-tag=\"international\">international<\/a> buyers by Heretic Films, also stars veteran French actor Philippe Rebbot as Ludo, and Xavier Bergeron as Pierric, a young man Mira meets during her travels. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tC\u00f4t\u00e9 has premiered seven previous feature films at Locarno, and as he prepares to launch <em>Nobody\u2019s Violence<\/em> on the festival circuit, he spoke with <em>THR<\/em> about debuting a death-pact drama now that his health \u2014 and his capacity to keep making films \u2014 has been restored.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Your movie deals with the controversial issue of assisted death. How did you approach the script for <em>Nobody\u2019s Violence<\/em>, given complex medical, ethical, legal and emotional questions that surround the issue?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tI didn\u2019t feel like tackling or dealing with an issue. It\u2019s more personal and subtle than that. The script was written at the worst period of my health condition. I didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d receive a transplant or dialysis, or if I\u2019d die. I had no clue what was life on the other side or what was upcoming. I was in an in-between space, and I was making another film on that subject of liminal spaces at the time: <em>Mademoiselle Kenopsia<\/em>. The film is not a comment on anything sociological or the fact that we now have MAID in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/canada\/\" id=\"auto-tag_canada_1\" data-tag=\"canada\">Canada<\/a>. [<em>In 2016 Canada has passed into law MAID \u2014 Medical Aid in Dying \u2014 a legal process that allows someone who is found eligible and has given informed consent to receive assistance from a medical practitioner to end their own life.<\/em>] It\u2019s about an angel woman stuck with twisted improbable job and in a somber moment of her life. And she must consider her own personal or professional afterlife. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Mira comes face to face with death, yet early on goes about her assistance to the dying is emotionally impassive, matter of fact. Was this deliberate? And why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tYes. Quickly, with Larissa, we talked about her character being an exterminating angel or an angel of death. She goes on and on, coldly, like the alien character of Scarlet Johannson in <em>Under the Skin<\/em>. She just knows what she has to do but the film pushes her to become more and more human. She\u2019s slowly being really affected by this job that has been going on for maybe six months, a year or more. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>How important was it to show as you do two sides to the controversial assisted dying issue in your movie, even more so in Catholic Quebec?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tYes, Mira had to meet resistance somewhere. Animism is still present in the daily lives of many. In one particular scene, the character uses very few words to express that assisted suicide is an impossible theory. Even though this medical aid in dying is overall quite well accepted here [in Canada], that resistance could have been coming from a devoted Catholic Quebecois character. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>The character Pierric \u2014 a young man Mira meets early in the film who becomes something of a love interest \u2014 basically says we\u2019re all going to die, first we party. His words later prove prophetic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe whole idea of Pierric was fun to write. Mira met him and didn\u2019t forget that her life could be made of a better communion with people and the world. Pierric represents the idea of two things missing in her life: love and sex. But through the improbabilities, playfulness and evilness of the script, I made sure they would meet again. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Mira, despite all her shyness, responds to Pierric\u2019s aggressive sexual advance. Is she looking for some kind of release?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIt\u2019s the first step, for sure. She\u2019s repressed because of the nature of her job, because of a possible dark past we don\u2019t know. But it doesn\u2019t take much for her to come back with the living.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>The mysterious group that Mira belongs to is like a cult, led by a louche Ludo, a grim reaper character. What inspired the look and feel of this character and his organization?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThey all look like a cult, connected somehow to the government, made up of hedonists and bohemians. I don\u2019t really know who they are. I created them as a force against Mira, as a group you don\u2019t want to be a part of. I imagined them as libertarians, maybe conspiracy theorists, if you let them talk long enough. Meeting Pierric creates an internal shock for Mira. He is life, they are partying around death. To change her life, she will at some point have to destroy something, annihilate something. That\u2019s how I see it. It doesn\u2019t mean that\u2019s how the viewer reacts to all that mess.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Eventually Mira\u2019s own and Ludo\u2019s lives collide. The camera shows their confrontation at a distance. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThere\u2019s a bit of cat and mouse play that I like in the last part of the film. We shot the confrontation in the woods from a distance and also from a very intimate pov. In the editing process, we didn\u2019t feel like overediting that encounter. The emotion was more direct with that colder, distant choice. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>So often in your movie, the camera pans away at the moment someone dies. Why show death at a distance, or not at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tYou don\u2019t see any explicit deaths on screen because that film was created with a strong desire for life, for Mira, for her future.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Given that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/france\/\" id=\"auto-tag_france_1\" data-tag=\"france\">France<\/a> just passed legislation to\u00a0assist terminally ill adults who meet strict criteria to die, and Italy has some regional laws to allow physician-assisted death, how do you expect your film to be received at Locarno?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIf people really want to talk about this issue, I will just talk about our experience in Quebec \u2014 we are the country with the highest amount of medical aid in dying in the world. We closed that debate, and other countries are now having it too. I\u2019m glad. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Can you talk about why you dedicate your 17<sup>th<\/sup> movie to your mother<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tYes, she died of quick complications from Alzheimer\u2019s a year ago. The script was not written at her worst period, but thinking about it now, I wonder if she would\u2019ve been OK with MAID. A person without 100 percent mental capacities can\u2019t request the service. I felt I had to dedicate the film to her, even though it\u2019s made of memories, fragments and traces of my own degeneration from the kidney condition. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian auteur Denis C\u00f4t\u00e9 received a new kidney from a donor friend in August 2023, after a degenerative disease had threatened both his life and his ability to keep making movies. \u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d receive a transplant or dialysis, or if I\u2019d die. I had no clue what was life on the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Nobodys-Violence-film-still.webp?w=969&h=545&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}