Québec’s reputation in the film world is well established, and the work of its screen composers has played no small part in that. Here are three SOCAN members who are sure to make their mark at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Philippe Brault
His résumé is impressive, to say the least. For years, Philippe Brault served as Pierre Lapointe’s musical director. He also produced a number of major albums, including Patrice Michaud’s Almanach and Safia Nolin’s Limoilou, among many others.
Today, Brault brings his talents as a composer to film and television. His credits include the original scores for Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds (Bergers) and Ivan Grbovic’s Drunken Birds (Les oiseaux ivres).
Filmmaker Yan Lanouette Turgeon enlisted Brault to score his latest feature, Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend (Villeneuve: l’ascension d’une légende), which chronicles the life of race car driver Gilles Villeneuve and will screen as TIFF’s closing-night film—no less!
//Suggested Read: Philippe Brault catches the movie bug
Trailer for “Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend”. Click the link for the video.
Frannie Holder
This singer-songwriter and composer’s career now spans nearly two decades, dating back to the days when her band Random Recipe had the whole of Montréal shimmying. Frannie Holder is a remarkably versatile musician with an exceptionally broad range, equally capable of moving an audience and getting it on its feet.
At TIFF, in 2026, two of her latest projects will make their debut. The first is Juan Andrés Arango’s Where the River Begins (Donde comienza el río), a Canada-Colombia-Norway co-production that uses fiction to explore the realities of migration across the Americas.
The second is The Final Act (Le dernier acte), a documentary by Sophie Deraspe that takes an intimate, philosophical look at medical assistance in dying.
//Suggested Read: Bespoke Work With Frannie Holder
Trailer for “Donde Comienza el Río” Click the link for the video.
Peter Venne
As he likes to put it on his website, he creates in solitude and seclusion from his studio in the Laurentians, north of Montréal. With a graduate diploma in film music from UQAM, Peter Venne has long known that this is the path he was meant to pursue.
His IMDb credits as a composer include, among others, Matthew Rankin’s The 20th Century and Meryam Joobeur’s The Source (La Source), two very, very different films that, when compared side by side, speak volumes about Peter Venne’s remarkable versatility.
Two films featuring his music will be screened during the TIFF: Rémi St-Michel’s Toy Gun Bandit, an action film with a pulse-pounding trailer, and Ashley Duong’s Ba’s Book, a documentary shot in Vietnam that blurs the line between reality and re-enactment.
//Suggested Read: Peter Venne’s Work on Hunting Daze
Trailer for “Toy Gun Bandit”. Click the link for the video.
