97 minutes – Drama
Language: French
Festival release date: May 2016 (Cannes)
Release date: September 23, 2016 (Toronto)
Canadian distributor: Entertainment One

Juste la fin du monde, aka It’s Just the End of the World, is a France-Canada coproduction. It was adapted by its director, Xavier Dolan, from the play by Jean-Luc Lagarce. The story revolves around a writer, Louis, 34-years-old who decides to return to his hometown after an absence of 12 years. He plans to tell his family of his upcoming death. Resentment soon rewrites the course of the afternoon, fights and feuds unfold through diatribes fuelled by loneliness and doubt; ham-handed attempts at declaring their love to each other, and the typical paradoxes of human nature. The writer leaves with his secret untold. Dolan is reported as saying he delayed his English-language debut film, The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan, because he thought “It’s Only The End Of The World could very well bridge the genre chasm between Mommy and John F.” The film was shot in Montreal beginning on May 26, 2015. On May 22, 2016 it won the Grand Prix at the 69th Cannes Film Festival. It was announced in late September 2016 that Juste la fin du monde would be Canada’s official entry at the 2017 Academy Awards® in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Also see: This film was selected as one of the Top 10 Canadian Films of the 2010s.
Poster and trailer curtesy of Entertainment One.