The Gala des artisans Québec Cinéma 2023 unveiled its winners on Dec. 7, 2023, at Studio TD in Montreal. Twelve SOCAN screen composer members were finalists in the Best Original Score and Best Original Score/Documentary categories.
In the Best Original Score category, singer-songwriter Daniel Bélanger was awarded the trophy for the film Confessions, directed by Luc Picard.
Interviewed by W&M when he released album Mercure en mai, Bélanger explained his process for screen composing: “Luc Picard reached out to me about scoring his movie while I was working on my album. The pandemic afforded me freedom in each of those projects. They send me 20-minute sections of the movie. Obviously, I don’t start by scoring the end of the movie, but sometimes, I’ll place an arrangement at the end of a 20-minute segment, and then I circle back to the beginning of it. I always work with a first draft, followed by fine-tuning – once I get the bigger picture. It’s a bit like making a pie before cutting the excess dough around it.”
In the Best Original Score/Documentary category, the Iris went to Daniel Baillargeon, aka Gervaise, for his composition work on the documentary Gabor, by director Joannie Lafrenière. A dialogue between the director and Hungarian-born photographer Gabor Szilasi, this film paints a tender, colourful portrait of this humanist artist – who’s spent the last 60 years documenting the eloquence of everyday life in his adopted homeland of Québec.
For the complete list of finalists and winners of the 2023 edition of the Gala Québec Cinéma, visit the official website. Congratulations to the two winners, and to all the other finalists in these two categories!