“Democracies are in danger. »For Loïc Guyot, co -director of PPhantom weed With Guillaume Gauthier, the Docufiction is released in a tense international context, where our systems vacillate. “We sometimes keep things for acquired, but we can see that the work is always to be redone,” he says. Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, former journalist at Duty And politician at the heart of the film, shares this concern: “There are people who use the law of force and gangster behavior to take power. We see what is happening in the United States with the extreme right, which has no qualms about using violence, intimidation, falsehoods, lies, to install its power. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s enthronement and the economic and political threats he hovers about Canada, his words are even colder in the back.
Ghost power Wishes to carry out its duty of collective memory by dusting the commission of inquiry into organized crime (CECO) fifty years later. At the time, in the 1970s, relatives of Robert Bourassa and Jean Drapeau rub shoulders with the interlope world … So we have to dispel suspicions, as quickly as possible. “People forget it, but, in Quebec, corruption has been generalized for years,” said Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, who remembers, for having been on the ground for a long time, “twisted” electoral mores, electoral funds “Occult” and multiple “incestuous connections”. According to him, corruption and collusion concerned not only policies and the police, but also the intelligence services, the army, the judicial system and the journalistic environment.
Precisely, with his feature film, Loïc Guyot also wanted to pay tribute to the “power of the pen”, which played an essential role in the implementation of CECO in September 1972, after the publication of surveys signed Jean- Pierre Charbonneau. “If we had not had an intrepid young, an incorruptible, who was not afraid to take a bullet and to be threatened by the mafia, it would not have passed,” said the co -Coscenarist. While press freedom was rarely in danger as in 2025, for reasons ranging from the difficulty of financing to fake newshe wants, with Ghost powerinsist on its fundamental character. “It was very important for us to recall that the quality of information is essential to a law company. It was taking Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, but it also took a Dutya press organ that had a dissemination. “And the scriptwriter of the documentary, Tristan Malavoy, a former journalist, to add:” I see how fragile it is. If I had been told ten or fifteen years ago, when I was a designer then editor -in -chief of Seethat everything was going to crumble, I would not have believed it. Today, the danger is indeed there.
Attachment to facts
The team causing the Ghost power in fact gave great importance to the documentary aspect of his documentary. “There is the factual, the truthful, the verifiable, in particular with the electronic listening coils and the reports in which I had access and which I integrated in the scenario as is,” explains Tristan Malavoy. According to him, the film becomes more interesting when what is supposed to the screen about the CECO is in the most informed way possible. “There are the facts, indisputable and that one cannot discuss, but what is presumed is an informed hypothesis, by Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, among others, who lived the events even in his flesh, This is the least we can say, and who has been thinking about these questions for 50 years, ”he says.
-Fiction at the service of the documentary, for its part, is useful for “filling the holes”. “For me, it’s like a headache that would miss a few pieces. But before imagining the missing pieces, you have to be sure you have all the existing parts, be sure that they have been found, “said Tristan Malavoy, who hopes to offer the public the best possible interpretation. The use of fiction also makes it possible to transcend the limits imposed by archive documents, to give relief to historical figures. “Seeing Robert Bourassa who says a word more hooked than what we are used to hearing or seeing Jean Drapeau who gets angry, it feels good, because it humanizes them,” says Loïc Guyot. In Ghost powerthese personalities are no longer simply frozen in time, but accessible to viewers.
If Jean-Pierre Charbonneau believes that the myth of the mafioso can be attractive for the general public, it is essential to regularly bring history back to what it is. “It is like a kind of duty of citizen conscience, information and education, because these organizations are cancers, literally, for society,” he said. For his part, Loïc Guyot would like the spectrum of corruption and collusion not to fade over time. “Even if you have the impression that everything is fine, that’s not true. You have to learn from history to protect yourself and so that it does not repeat itself, ”concludes the co -director.
