Old lion of New Hollywood, Paul Schrader has not finished roaring. In May, the Cannes competition welcomed the American's twenty-fourth feature film, Oh, Canada. An adaptation of the penultimate novel by his friend and compatriot Russell Banks (1940-2023), translated by Actes Sud in 2022. Met during the Cannes Film Festival, the 78-year-old filmmaker returns to the shadows that run through this work ambiguous and sepulchral.
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Your film defies classic biographical principles. Can we speak of an “anti-biopic”?
I must remind you that this is, first and foremost, a story imagined by Russell [Banks]. He got sick, I read his book, and it became my idea. Russell called him his “Ivan Ilitch” [référence à une nouvelle de Léon Tolstoï, La Mort d’Ivan Ilitch, parue en 1886] ; it became my “Ivan Ilitch”. I wouldn't have written it on my own, because I'm wary of films where the protagonist is in the cinema. I was looking for an escape, after three relatively simple films [Sur le chemin de la rédemption, 2017 ; The Card Counter, 2021 ; Master Gardener, 2022]. Oh, Canada seemed different enough for me to work on adapting it.
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