For Canal 13, Francis Auger-Pagé invited me to play Gérald, a news anchor with something distinctly unusual about him. Written by Emmanuel Degryse, the film was created for the 2022–2023 edition of the Nikon Film Festival, whose theme that year was the number 13.
The challenge sounded simple on paper: tell a complete story in barely two minutes and twenty seconds. In practice, that required a strong idea, an immediately recognizable tone and a team able to get straight to the point. That was exactly what appealed to me about the project.
Working with Francis Auger-Pagé again after Fleur de peau
My connection with Francis did not begin with Canal 13. We had already worked together on Fleur de peau, where I played the assistant to a film producer. Francis was working in cinematography on that project, and it was also where I met Charles Labrie.
Francis had liked what I did with that deliberately caricatured and rather questionable character. So when he offered me Gérald in his new short film, I was very happy to say yes. I liked the idea of reuniting with that team in a completely different register while keeping the same desire to play and make something together.
Gérald, a very unusual news anchor
In the script, Gérald Tremblay is the polished face of Canal 13, “the channel that tells you what tomorrow will bring.” Suit, tie, measured delivery: he looks exactly like the reassuring anchor you are supposed to trust.
The problem is that the news he delivers is not exactly the kind you would want to hear. Together with Patricia, the field reporter, he reports events that have not happened yet — including the very specific fate awaiting a certain Franck Dumas.
For me, the fun of the role was in that contrast: remain credible as a newsreader while gradually allowing something stranger, almost unsettling, to emerge. Gérald had to smile like someone completely in control of the broadcast… perhaps a little too completely.
The number 13 as the starting point
The Nikon Film Festival theme that year was the number 13, and Emmanuel Degryse placed it directly at the centre of the concept rather than treating it as a passing reference. The title, the television channel and the film’s entire atmosphere are built around that sense of bad luck and foreboding.
I enjoy that kind of creative constraint. When you have almost no time, the concept has to land immediately. Here, a man discovers a television channel that appears to know his future. From that point on, every second matters: establish the situation, build the tension and let the dark humour do its work.
Dark humour built on one simple idea
The script begins almost ordinarily. Franck, played by James Daponte, is flipping through channels when he lands on Canal 13. Gérald then throws to Patricia, played by Claudia Nicole-Benko, who is standing outside his home and calmly announces, with complete professional composure, that he will die a few minutes later.
The mechanism quickly becomes a mixture of suspense and absurdity: a doorbell, a package, an improbable accident, and a news broadcast that keeps moving along as though all of this were perfectly normal. It is exactly the kind of humour I enjoy playing because it works best when the characters themselves are not trying to be funny.
Cold streets and a fake news broadcast
My visual memories of the shoot capture the project’s contrast fairly well. Part of the team was outside at night in a snowy neighbourhood, with the camera set up right in the street. Elsewhere, we were building the film’s television world in front of a green screen, with microphones, wardrobe and studio lighting.
Gérald, for his part, had a look that was impossible to miss: bright yellow suit, tie, lavalier microphone and the full seriousness of a television newsreader. The costume was already doing part of the work before I opened my mouth. My job was to find the balance between the anchor’s confidence and the faint discomfort gradually settling behind his smile.
A great group in front of and behind the camera
A short film this brief depends enormously on the precision of the entire team. Francis Auger-Pagé directed, Emmanuel Degryse wrote the screenplay, Charles J. Labrie handled cinematography and Walter E. Gomez edited the film. Maria Rachelle D’Amour designed the costumes.
In front of the camera, I had the pleasure of sharing the project with James Daponte, Claudia Nicole-Benko and Myles Stuart. Even when we were not all together in the same scene, each person helped build the film’s very particular tone.
What I remember most is a generous, focused group able to work seriously without making the set feel heavy. I value that enormously on a shoot.
Finding the pleasure of playing together again
What had already stayed with me from working with Francis and Charles on Fleur de peau was the feeling that rigorous work did not have to come at the expense of enjoying being there. Canal 13 carried that feeling forward almost exactly.
There were technical adjustments, takes to redo, cold weather, the constraints of a small independent shoot and the need to work efficiently. There was also a great deal of good humour. For me, that combination is precious: a team that knows what it wants while keeping enough lightness for ideas to circulate and for actors to play.
That is often the kind of environment in which I feel freest to offer something.
When a small project keeps travelling
Canal 13 was originally conceived for the 2022–2023 Nikon Film Festival. The film continued beyond that first purpose and was later presented at Fantasia in 2024.
I like when a project finds that kind of life. On set, you are mostly thinking about the scene in front of you, the frame, the rhythm and the next take. You do not always know where the film will travel afterward. Seeing an independent short find new screens after its original reason for existing gives the entire team’s work a second life.
What I remember from Canal 13
Looking back, what I remember most about Canal 13 is the human continuity behind the project. One shoot leads to a meeting, that meeting leads to another collaboration, and that collaboration opens still more doors.
Francis had seen me play the Assistant in Fleur de peau. Some time later, he offered me Gérald: polished, smiling and just unsettling enough to announce the future as though he were reading the weather.
The film is short. My memory of making it is much longer. Whenever I see that yellow suit again or photos of the team in the snow, what comes back first is the pleasure of having made this strange little thing with people I was genuinely happy to work with again.
