Teenage Hubert (Dolan) lives in the suburbs with his mother (Anne Dorval), who drives him crazy. Her kitsch decor, her tacky sweaters, even the way she eats her toast mortifies and enrages him. She, in turn, is humiliated when she hears for the first time of his sexuality from his new boyfriend's more acceptably middle-class mother. Dolan wrote the script for this film about the tormented love between mother and son when he was sixteen, and then produced, directed and starred in it. In addition to the three awards from the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, the film received a number of awards internationally, as well as the Claude Jutra Award for the best first feature at the 2009 Genies.

Xavier Dolan (b. 1989)

Dolan is the current wunderkind of Canadian cinema, winning three awards at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival when he was only 19. His second film, Les Amours Imaginaires (2010) premiered to wide acclaim at Cannes and won the top prize at the 2010 Sidney Film Festival. He is currently working on a third feature, Laurence Anyways, and supplies the voice of Stan for the French language version of South Park.