Canadian premiere

Americans Smell Good

Emir, the film’s director, leaves his native Turkey to study in the United States. A few years later, he still lives and works there, alongside his new family, while continuing to check on his mother who still lives in Turkey. Emir exists between these two worlds and explores a hybrid of cultures by retracing his journey and that of the people he has met in his new life, and may have never met otherwise. In this tender and atypical movie, he weaves together the invisible web of these relationships.

Directed by

Emir Cakaroz

2024 | 66 min | English, Turkish (s.t. English)

Featured selection

Wisconsin Film Festival

Filmmaker’s country : United States
Country of filming : United States

*The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Sophie Valcourt, moderated by Benoît Raoulx.

Benoît Raoulx is a teacher-researcher in social geography and a documentary filmmaker. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Caen Normandie. After training at Ateliers Varan (Paris), he made several films: Traplines in Vancouver (2003), Las Playitas (2007), L’Encyclopédie des migrants (2017, with F. Leterrier), which have been screened at various documentary film festivals and meetings in France and elsewhere. He coordinates a “Film et recherche en sciences humaines et sociales” (FRESH) program, supported by several academic and cultural institutions in France and Tunisia, at the confluence of creative documentary filmmaking and research in the humanities and social sciences.

Originally from Sept-Îles, Sophie Valcourt — like so many young people from the North Shore — made the decision to move to Montreal to pursue university studies. After creating a short film titled Seize as part of her academic journey, the Concordia University Film Production graduate has now completed her first independent project, Never Anywhere, a documentary in which she shares with two close friends her desire to reconnect with her native region.