Year: 1984
Language: French
Format: 35mm Colour
Runtime: 90 min
Director: Micheline Lanctôt
Producer: Pierre Gendron
Writer: Micheline Lanctôt
Cinematographer: Guy Dufaux
Editor: Louise Surprenant
Sound: Marcel Fraser
Music: François Lanctôt
Cast: Marcia Pilote, Yves Jacques, Pierre Giard, Pierre Fauteux, Kliment Dentchev, Pascale Bussières

Micheline Lanctôt's second feature film, Sonatine, captured the Silver Lion Award at the 1984 Venice Film Festival — only the second Canadian film to do so. Charming and bittersweet, Sonatine explores the world of two upper middle–class teenage girls (Bussières and Pilote) on the brink of adulthood, who are reluctant to relinquish their childish dreams. Sharing secrets and adventures, they trade confidences and record their impressions on Walkmans. Disillusioned by the prosaicness of adulthood, unable to imagine a world without poetry and art, they play at games of love and escape.

Bressonian in its stylistic rigour, Sonatine is a sensitive study of two privileged young women who are nevertheless done in by an increasingly insensitive world.