We are MÖ

The Encounter

We met in our teenage years, in high school. As far back as we can remember, our conversations were already leading us to question the world—its ecosystems, its cultures, and the stories that connect us. Without realizing it at the time, something was beginning to take shape.

Long before cinema entered our lives, there was already a shared appetite for adventure, human stories, and exchange. This common curiosity, nourished by travel, encounters, and a desire to understand others, would become the foundation of our artistic path and the guiding force behind our documentary practice.

Discovering Cinema and the World

Deeply connected to the city of Québec, where we grew up and still live, our shared interest in science led us to study biology at Université Laval. Very quickly, our academic paths and climbing projects took us elsewhere: to France, Réunion Island, Madagascar, and then to the cliffs of Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand. Traveling gradually became a way of learning, observing, and understanding the world.

Along the way, without any clear cinematic intention, Mélanie filled notebooks with written reflections while Olivier accumulated images. Documenting became a natural gesture—a way to preserve memories, to share experiences, and to make sense of what we encountered.

In 2001, this emerging cinematic impulse took its first concrete form with Same Same But Different, a short film directed by Olivier about rock climbing in Thailand. Modest in its ambitions, the film was screened at Université Laval’s student film festival, where it received the Audience Award.

Gradually, a certainty took hold: telling the world through images and words would become a lasting commitment.

A bicycle expedition across Asia

After completing our bachelor’s degrees in biology, driven by a desire for adventure and inspired by the films discovered at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, we set out on an ambitious 8,000-kilometre bicycle expedition across Asia, from Mongolia to India.

Motivated by the wish to create our first professional documentary film, more than seventy MiniDV tapes accompanied the journey—well before the era of memory cards and GoPro-style cameras.

This expedition would profoundly shape both our lives and our artistic practice. It laid the foundations for a cinema rooted in reality, movement, and human encounter, and marked the beginning of a long-term documentary path.

Filmmakers  and speakers

From this journey emerged Asiemut, our first feature-length documentary, retracing an 8,000-kilometre bicycle expedition from Mongolia to India. The film gained wide international exposure, received more than 35 awards, and was broadcast on numerous television networks, including ARTE, RTBF, TSR, RAI, and Al Jazeera.

In the years that followed, we presented Asiemut through extensive conference and screening tours, notably with Les Grands Explorateurs in Québec and Exploration du Monde across Europe. These events brought the film to sold-out venues and cultural gatherings in Canada and abroad, extending the documentary experience through dialogue and live encounters with audiences.

At the same time, Mélanie published Cadence, a travel memoir inspired by the expedition, extending the film’s journey through writing. A new creative direction was taking shape.

Structuring our creative practice

In 2010, we officially founded MÖ FILMS, an independent documentary production company based in Québec. This structure allowed us to consolidate our creative approach and to develop long-form documentary projects rooted in time, research, and human connection.

The following year, we directed Rencontre, a documentary following a group of young Innu, Huron-Wendat, and Saguenay participants as they travel an ancestral trail linking Lac Saint-Jean to Québec City. Selected by the National Geographic Society, the film was later broadcast on TV5 Unis.

That same year, we also completed Ice Philosophy (L’Homme de Glace), a satirical fiction short film with a strong environmental focus, presented at numerous international film festivals. Together, these projects affirm our commitment to a documentary cinema attentive to the social, cultural, and environmental issues shaping our time.

Quebec Identity and Indigenous–Non-Indigenous Relations

We create Québékoisie, a feature-length documentary that examines the relationships between non-Indigenous Québécois and First Nations communities. Traveling by bicycle along Québec’s Côte-Nord, we seek to spark encounters, open dialogue, and question the blind spots shaping our identities and our collective lack of understanding.

The film marks a decisive turning point in our artistic approach. By embracing slowness, movement, listening, and shared voices, Québékoisie affirms a cinema of connection—deeply attentive to details, stories, silences, and the territories being crossed.

Widely embraced by both audiences and critics, Québékoisie has become a reference documentary in Québec, fostering a collective reflection on coexistence, identity, and the cohabitation of memories.

A rooted creative approach

Following a strong theatrical release and critical recognition, the documentary Québékoisie continued its journey with audiences. The film was broadcast on Illico, ICI Tou.TV, and later on TV5 Monde, reaching viewers across the globe. This wide international circulation extended the dialogues initiated on the ground and confirmed the project’s human resonance.

Québékoisie is deeply aligned with the reflection that guides our artistic approach. For us, entering into relationship with others means weaving the threads of identity—both individual and collective. In a biological as well as social sense, life is built through connection and cohesion. While each of our films has its own form and distinct voice, our work consistently seeks, through image and sound, to spark reflection on contemporary issues and to invite encounters with others.

From documentary film to immersive experience

Initially conceived as a short film to respond quickly to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, Wandering, a Rohingya Story rapidly grew in scope and evolved into a feature-length documentary, driven by the strength and urgency of its story.

Both immersive and poetic, the documentary was acclaimed by international critics and received major distinctions, including the Canadian Screen Award for Best Documentary and three Iris Awards, confirming the project’s powerful human and cinematic impact.

In parallel, Wandering, a Rohingya Story opened a new creative chapter by becoming a multidisciplinary immersive exhibition, presented at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, extending the documentary experience into the museum space.

This cycle marks a turning point in our journey, as cinema begins to dialogue with other artistic and narrative forms.

Family and museology 

In 2024 and 2025, two major projects come to life, fully embodying the current direction of our artistic approach.

At Their Height is a feature-length documentary filmed over nearly four years, at the heart of our family life. Through the eyes of our children, the film explores childhood, parenting, and questions of transmission that resonate with us both as parents and filmmakers. Awarded the Jean-Marc-Vallée Prize, the film marks a pivotal moment where creation, family, and commitment come together.

In parallel, Finding Refuge, a powerful immersive exhibition, is presented year-round at the Musée de la civilisation. The exhibition explores the journey of a Rohingya refugee, memory, and the process of belonging. Born from a renewed collaboration with Mohammed Shofi and artist Karine Giboulo, this project extends our engagement with stories of exile and confirms that our work now unfolds at the intersection of documentary cinema, installation, and immersive experience.

Telling real stories for generations to come

Looking ahead, we envision projects that are both intimate and universal, shaped through carefully chosen collaborations. Faithful to our editorial vision, we embrace the need to continually reinvent ourselves. Whether expressed through documentary films, written works, museum exhibitions, theatrical forms, transdisciplinary projects, or new narrative formats yet to emerge, we remain committed to creating meaningful works that nourish the soul—stories with the power to be shared, transmitted, and multiplied.

MÖ FILMS is, above all, a living creative space, driven by strong values and built through long-term collaborations with artists and partners who share our vision.

Alongside our creative projects, we remain actively engaged in Québec’s cultural and cinematic community. We support fellow filmmakers and collaborate with cultural organizations, convinced that transmission, shared experience, and dialogue are essential to the vitality of the creative ecosystem.