This Monday, November 28, the director, screenwriter and Quebec actor Xavier Dolan unveiled the trailer of his series “The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up”, which will soon be broadcast in France on Canal +.

This is his first foray into the small screen. Xavier Dolan, winner of the 2017 César for his film Only the End of the World, posted on his Instagram account on Monday 28 November the trailer for his first series, an adaptation of the play La Nuit ou Laurier Gaudreault s’is wake” by Michel Marc Bouchard. An author whose play “Tom on the Farm” he brought to the big screen in 2013.

‘The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up’, slated for Canadian SVOD service Club illico and forthcoming on Canal+, has been described as ‘a psychological thriller set in a family drama’. It is “a story about life and death, about grief, self-acceptance, family,” the director explained before shooting began and was pleased that this story enabled him to “explore the genre of the thriller and renew its narrative style”.

“I really gave myself 200% to this project in a whole, passionate and even aggressive way,” he confided to the Journal de Montréal on November 20 as part of the promo. “It matters a lot if there’s a reflection on life, death, grief, redemption, family in this show,” he explains. It’s quite a global and existential work. And this might be my way of saying goodbye for a while…” he said, hinting that he wouldn’t be back behind the camera anytime soon.

On the interpretive side, Julie Le Breton, Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Éric Bruneau and Patrick Hivon take on the roles they successfully occupied in 2019 on the stage of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.

The cast is completed by Xavier Dolan himself and Julianne Côté, “to bring deeply human characters to life in a poignant work where horror, humor, mystery and drama come together,” announced Canal+.

The playing field: In 1991, Julien, Mireille and Laurier formed an inseparable trio. But one night in October, tragedy erodes the relationship that binds them. Their two families, who were previously so close, are suddenly separated. Nothing will ever be the same again. Thirty years later, having become a renowned thanatologist, Mireille returns to the home to embalm her own mother, finding the brothers she abandoned twenty-five years earlier. Secrets and resentments will soon resurface, intertwining with grief and the search for reconciliation.