LES ORDRES aborde l’emprisonnement et le mauvais traitement de citoyens innocents découlant de l’emploi par le gouvernement du Canada de la Loi des mesures de guerre durant la Crise d’octobre 1970 au Québec. C’est le deuxième long-métrage réalisé par le cinéaste Michel Brault après Entre la mer et l’eau douce. Les Ordres lui vaut le Prix de la mise en scène au Festival de Cannes 1975. Il a également récolté quatre prix au Canadian Film Awards (l’ancêtre des prix Génie) la même année.

Les ordres has been rated by critics as one of the best Canadian films ever made. It subtly blends fiction and documentary realism in a chilling portrait of what can happen to a liberal democracy when the state imposes its power. In October 1970, when FLQ terrorists kidnapped a British diplomat and threatened to (and later did) murder a Quebec cabinet minister, Prime Minister Trudeau sanctioned the War Measures Act and sent the Canadian
army into Montreal. Close to 500 ordinary citizens who had no connection to the terrorists were summarily arrested and held without charge. Les ordres is the story of five people who were arrested and imprisoned. The film is Brault’s second fictional feature, and his cool, uninflected approach enables him to focus in human terms on the effects of the abrogation of rights and not on the po¬litical context. Brault shared the prize for best director at the Cannes Film Fes¬tival in 1975, and won the Quebec Critics As¬sociation prize for best film, and three Canadian Film Awards, for best feature, direction and script.

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