Insurgence is a documentary about the vast social mobilization that took place in Quebec during the spring of 2012. Initially propelled by the student strike for accessible education, the scope of the movement soon broadened to take on the government, the impunity and violence of the Montreal police force, the exploitation of untapped natural resources, and the current economic system. Using the direct cinema approach which defines the Épopée collective’s politics and approach, this 2-hour feature deprives the viewer of any classic didactic information. In this, the film distinguished itself completely from other documentary treatments of the #GGI (grève générale illimitée), the mass social movement that was born out of a student strike and led to the demise of the Charest Liberal government in Québec in 2012. Shown in festivals throughout Canada, in New York, and in Europe (Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, Zurich, Barcelona), Insurgence was praised for its on-the-ground filmic perspective and marriage of form and content: “Repression can only break up linear collectivities: here, at every turn, at every corner, the common returns in a swarm.”[1]

[1] Cinema Politica. Accessed August 2015. (http://www.cinemapolitica.org/film/insurgence)