Denis Côté - Cinema as Medicine for Loneliness

At
Vega Scene
Join for an in depth conversation with Denis Côté after the screening of Paul. An exploration and intimate intimate portrait of a man drifting between cleaning and ritualistic submission to heal his anxiety.
Original title: Paul Year of Production: 2025 Duration: 87 min Country of Production: Canada Languages: English, French Subtitles: English Director: Denis Côté Cinematographer: Vincent Biron, François Messier-Rheault Editor: Terence Chotard Sound Design: Terence Chotard, Stéphane Bergeron Music: Chantale Morin Producer: Hany Ouichou, Karine Bélanger

A portrait of solitude, Paul moves with the quiet rhythm of a life pared down to its bare essentials. Shadows of anxiety and depression drift through the frame, but so too does an unexpected lightness—moments where play, submission, and ritual blur into something tender and restorative. Paul has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes it one day at a time.

Paul shapes a private language of connection: the gentle choreography of cleaning, the small theatre of performance, the safety of self-reinvention. The film lingers in the silences between gestures, attentive to the way vulnerability can become a kind of power, and to how identity might be pieced together from fragments of fantasy, discipline, and longing. With an unhurried gaze, it reveals a life lived in the margins—where care and control are renegotiated, where intimacy can be wordless, and where even the most unassuming acts hold the weight of survival.

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