Landgraves
2020 · 23m · Canada
Directed by Jean-François Leblanc
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
A young journalist ventures into the deep woods to interview the heavy-metal duo Landgraves, recording their first album since a murder imprisonment — and his curiosity pulls him deeper into the forest as a snowstorm closes in.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A heavy-metal band fresh out of prison, a journalist spiraling into paranoia, a snowstorm that feels less like weather and more like a closing trap—Leblanc takes the interview-doc-gone-wrong premise and twists it into something genuinely unhinged, the kind of film that refuses to stay in one genre long enough for you to get comfortable.
Leblanc demonstrates considerable control over atmosphere and spatial storytelling, building dread through careful framing and the accumulation of small formal choices—the snowstorm becomes both literal enclosure and visual metaphor, situating the work in a lineage of psychological thrillers aware of their own construction.
The decision to let the mystery unfold almost entirely through sound—the band's music, the journalist's breathing, the forest itself—rather than exposition feels like it could've been a gimmick, but Leblanc commits so fully that it becomes the film's entire spine, turning a modest budget into something claustrophobic and genuinely disorienting.