Maureen Sauvageau’s escape comes to an abrupt end when she drives her monster truck into a deadly car accident. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, she must share the company and the blame of a rather touching junkie dubbed Jelly the Loon.

Born in rural Quebec, Alexandre Dostie is a self-taught artist with a unique background. Published poet, booze-bruised punk singer and filmmaker, his first short narrative fiction, MUTANTS (2016) screened in over 100 festivals and won numerous awards, including Best Canadian Short at TIFF. The film was also released as a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere, gathering close to 700K views. I’LL END UP IN JAIL (2019), his latest offering, already screened at TIFF, Sundance, Clermont-Ferrand and Tampere. The film was named “Best Int. Short Film” by the Vimeo programming team on their unofficial Sundance jury awards. Alexandre is currently working on his debut feature, SHAPE.

I wanted to shoot in a rural region where I grew up in Quebec called La Beauce, which is like our Texas. I knew the harsh landscape there would be perfect for the story I wanted to tell. We started scouting a whole year before shooting the film. To find the location where Maureen would crash, we drove 800 km of secondary and dirt roads. I was highlighting our progress on a map and grew desperate when we couldn’t find the perfect spot. People in the region were like: “Looking for a hilly road? No stress they’re all over!” but none matched the precise vision I had in my mind. In the end, we found it less than 10 km from the house where I grew up! It was exhilarating! I went back with DOP Vincent Biron and I could tell him the whole story and shots walking on the road we found, crossing to the prairie and down in the forest. It was magical! The same heartfelt process occurred for every other location in the film, including the fire watch at the end which I saw in a dream. I tried to find it for months until I realized it was my own uncle’s hunting cabin.

– Excerpt from Vimeo Staff Pick Premieres