Synopsis

In 1972, a general strike shakes Quebec, exposing tensions between the working class and the bourgeoisie. In Sept-Îles, workers and activists resist capitalist exploitation, but the movement is marked by repression and tragedy. This documentary explores the legacy of the labor movement and the struggle to preserve its memory.

Letter from the filmmakers

We grew up in a world frozen in the present — a world where History seemed to have disappeared. And yet, beneath the layers of concrete and dusty archives, another memory insists on resurfacing — that of a workers' uprising too often reduced to a footnote or a passing news item.

Spring 1972, Sept-Îles. An industrial town, a Common Front, a surge of momentum. Workers' voices rise. And then, the shock. An attack. A death. And the dream collapses. Not into oblivion — but into something more insidious: the realism of bitterness. This moment of insurrectionary tension becomes the culmination of a form of unionism that, believing it was defending its right to exist, accepted the rules of power.

The Power to Forget is an investigation — but without a culprit to name. A montage of fragments, voices, archives, and silences. An attempt to recover what was set aside — not erased, but buried beneath an official narrative of progress, a narrative that has since turned into a nightmare. We did not want to make the past speak. We listened to the fractures of the present. In the spirit of a cinema of rupture — somewhere between political poem and investigative film — we let images collide, voices echo, contradictions unfold. Because memory is not transmitted. It is reawakened. It is replayed. And sometimes, it still burns.

The film traces back to the origins of the modern union myth, forged by none other than Pierre Elliott Trudeau in The Asbestos Strike, where the worker became a symbol of emancipation.

Every movement that followed — bureaucrats, politicians, intellectuals — inherited this imaginary. And all of them, despite their disagreements over nationalism, eventually embraced the idea of managed capitalist progress.

Over the decades, anger turned into administration. The dream faded in the compromises of the central bargaining table.

And those who believed in it — sometimes to the point of sacrifice — are left to live with a memory that no one knows, or wants, to hear anymore.

Through a montage of archives, stories, and silences, The Power to Forget retraces the shift from militant unionism to state-managed unionism.

And it asks a question that remains unanswered:

How can we interpret historical events in words that are not those of the national icons?

This film offers no reconciliation.
It questions the price of order — and what had to be forgotten… so they could build their power.

Credits

Directors : David Simard & Pierre-Luc Junet Producer: Frederic Bohbot Line producer : Valérie Shamash Associate producer : Andréane Laurin
Editor: David Simard Director of photography: Philippe Toupin
Original music: Lex Castle

Produced in association by SODEC, CMF, the Rogers Documentary Fund, Télé-Québec, Tax credits Québec & Canada

Technical details

Genre: Documentary
Category: Société, histoire, politique
Year: 2022 & 2025
Language: French (st. english)
Length: 52/126 minutes
Format: DCP, digital

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