76 Minutes – Drama, Black & White
Language: French
Release date: February 6, 2009
DVD Release date: August 25, 2009
Canadian distributor: Alliance VivaFilm

This film was inspired by these real events: On December 6, 1989, twenty-five year old Marc Lepine, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, walked into L’école Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He shot twenty-eight people, killing fourteen and injuring another fourteen before killing himself. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was “fighting feminism”, he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. He killed fourteen women and injured four men and ten women in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself. The film, Polytechnique, documents that specific day through the eyes of two students, Valérie and Jean-François, whose lives were forever changed by the events of that day in December 1989.

Trailer and poster courtesy of Alliance Vivafilm
Also see: Northernstars reviews the DVD of Polytechnique.
Also see: Don Carmody talks about the making of Polytechnique.