As a fledgling director in Canada, there are few artists I could choose to aspire to as much as I do Xavier Dolan. At 16 years old, he wrote the script for J'ai tué ma mère (I Killed my Mother), which he directed, produced, and starred in at only 19. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 to an eight-minute standing ovation. Since then, the Québec-born director has been internationally celebrated for his diverse body of work, characterized by emotional depth, dynamic characters, and a poetic visual style. He has birthed multiple cinematic gems, including Les Amours imaginaires/Heartbeats (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012), and Matthias et Maxime/Matthias & Maxime (2019). Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World), starring Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, and Léa Seydoux, won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2016.

Recently, while in post-production on my own film, my editor suggested that I re-watch Dolan’s Mommy (2014) for inspiration on how to imaginatively shift between aspect ratios...