Newly retired Denise feels trapped. Between her ex-husband who refuses to take her seriously, her openly contemptuous son and her inability to move on from her former position as financial director, she’s badly in need of a fresh start. But not until she decides to move back to the neighbourhood of her youth—a place where things were once routinely settled with fists—do new possibilities begin to emerge. Enter Paul, her Bukowski-esque neighbour who, each night, assembles his ragtag cast of characters around the poker table. The quiet, secretive Denise, gradually drawn into the game, discovers a new kind of “family”... After the remarkable Nuages sur la ville, hailed as Best Canadian Film at the 2009 FNC, Galiero once again trains his tough-love lens on a divided Québec. Both poetic and cheeky, on par with André Forcier at his best, Small Blind, shot with tremendous formal rigour, is also wonderfully down to earth. Micheline Bernard delivers a white-hot, moving performance as Denise, a woman adrift, admirably seconded by Louis Sincennes and Julien Poulin.

Presented with the support of the French General Consulate in Québec