Mercenaire

Filmmaker's note

After Vétérane and Rebel, Mercenaire is the third short film in a series of “tense social portraits”. This latest entry is perhaps my most personal film yet. I grew up in a region with a strong presence of organized crime, and I witnessed the downfall of several of my childhood friends who were imprisoned for violent crimes. In Quebec, the meat industry is a leading employer for ex-convicts, who are often rejected by the rest of the labor market. The dramatic irony of the situation is quite telling: although per our system they were imprisoned as a way to rehabilitate them from their own violence, they’re thrown right back in a cruel environment as if society deemed them only good for killing. Inspired by an original idea by actor Marc-André Grondin, I wrote a screenplay based on my research on slaughterhouses and on horrifying blunders that some employees confided having witnessed. I wanted to make a tense, anxiety-inducing film, with directorial choices that imprison the viewer inside this suffocating workplace alongside David.