The Eighth Floor

(Le huitième étage, jours de révolte)

Pedro Ruiz / Cuba, Canada / 2023 / 91 min
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  • Rendez-Vous Québec Cinéma

  • Festival de la Ville de Québec

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Synopsis

French and Spanish with English Subtitles

With Jacques Lanctôt, Martin Dubreuil, Lola Amores, Luis Alberto Garcia, Yasmany Guerrero

Reminiscent of literary autofiction, the film chronicles the life of Jacques Lanctôt, a notable figure of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) upon his return to the eighth-floor room of the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba—a place that once sheltered him during his exile in the 1970s.

Using the presence of a recording team as a pretext for Lanctôt to reflect on his journey towards self-discovery, this biopic captures the emotional turmoil of a man in forced retirement, navigating an intimate and poetic journey through his mind within the enchanted castle of a Caribbean island.

An evocative exploration of memory, exile, and the complexities of the human psyche, The Eighth Floor blurs the lines between reality and fantasy in a hybrid film that melds autobiography with fiction.

Related Subjects
About the Director
Pedro Ruiz is a bachelor in Social Communication, a filmmaker, and a photojournalist. He made Tropical Animal in Montreal (2007), a portrait of Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. His next film, The Sweet Drifting of a Child from Petit-Goâve, immerses us in writer Dany Laferrière’s unbridled imagination. He was awarded the Public Prize at the Montreal International Documentary Festival in 2009. In 2012 he directed Philemon chante Habana, an intimate odyssey of composer and singer Philémon Simon. In 2019, he finished Havana, From on High, a dazzling and poetic trip into Havana that went on to win Best Cinematography at the Canadian Screen Awards (2020). His latest film, The Eighth Floor is a hybrid work about the exile of Jacques Lanctot in Havana, Cuba.
Press

“A hybrid cinematographic work, a documentary as real as fiction, which features actors and the presence of Jacques Lanctôt, expressing himself in interviews in a profound and engaging tribute to the Latin American cinema of the 60s, praising the film Memoirs du sous-development, in a very particular and personal way.” – Werner Herzog

“This film is a work of art with the hybrid mix of elements used. Pedro Ruiz does an amazing job at shedding light into this complex story.” – Alejandra de la Huerta, Point of View Magazine

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