Related Links: Vancouver Critics Pick I Killed My Mother | Trailer

Xavier Dolan's debut feature may be the greatest Canadian film success story of the year. It received a triumvirate of prizes at the Cannes Festival's Quinzaine and is the talk of the town - and a significant box office smash - in Québec. At just 17, Dolan penned the script for this semi-autobiographical story of a stormy relationship between a mother and her son. Call it therapy.

Hubert (Dolan, now 21) is a precocious, opinionated and just-out-of-the-closet teenager whose contempt for his mother (Anne Dorval in an equally wonderful performance) consumes him. He fosters animalistic disdain for everything about her: the way she eats, her Ft. Lauderdale shopping finds, and her kitschy décor. Every idiosyncrasy is magnified in his eyes, and he's less than shy about expressing his derision. Hubert's mother is an "old-school" master of manipulation and guilt (every good parent's specialty!), who is her son's match in joual tongue-lashing. Their exasperation is mutual, and when she's finally had it and sends Hubert to the aptly titled Our Lady of Sorrows boarding school, it seems that their strained relationship will fall irreparably apart. Between the violent outbursts are countless moments of truth and tenderness. "It's a paradox having a mother that you are incapable of loving, but incapable not to love," Hubert confesses. Sit up and take note of this poignant, scorching, utterly hilarious film: Dolan is a force to be reckoned with.