Director: Jeremy Comte | with Joey Boivin Desmeules, Daniel Atsu Hukporti, Evelyne de la Chenelière | Canada / France / Ghana 2026 | World premiere | 90’
A man scampers through a palm-strewn beach and makes his way by canoe to a massive fire on board a cargo ship off the coast of Ghana. This desperate attempt to rescue a burning victim, who turns out to be the beleaguered captain, will fuse together the fates of two families: one in the chaotic city of Accra, Ghana, the other in a rural Canadian backwater.
Fire becomes an incandescent metaphor for suffering and transformation in this unsettling psychological thriller that subverts expectations: that the West is rich and sophisticated and that poor and impoverished Africans are all unable to fend for themselves. Instead an unsuspecting Canadian woman and her son, fall prey to the wiles of a savvy band of African swindlers when a lost mobile phone gets into the wrong hands and becomes the vector for a cunning scam.
But there is always good as well as evil and here the characters are cleverly explored on each side with the finale offering no easy solutions. Paradise is a debut feature for the young Canadian filmmaker and while some may find its focus on visual fireworks and the poetic finale, left open to interpretation, unconvincing and requiring a leap of faith, but it is nonetheless an inventive piece of filmmaking. The director is driven by style and imagination rather than cut and dried outcomes suggesting that are often many sides to a situation, as in real life.
Playing out in various parts entitled, ‘The Boat’, ‘The Fire’ Jérémy Comte’s first full length feature follows his 2019 short film Fauve, which won a clutch of awards, and went onto garner an Oscar nomination. Once again involving psychological warfare, Paradise makes evocative use of poetic imagery and the raw and unpredictable elements of nature to explore the human condition, curiosity, perception and the human need to question and unravel the unknown.
BERLINALE | PANORAMA STRAND | 12-22 FEBRUARY 2026