At the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma festival in Montreal, cinema changed pace. During a special screening of the film Love Apocalypse by director Anne Émond, the film was shown at 1.5x speed, reducing the running time from approximately 100 to 66 minutes. The initiative, renamed “Les Moins Longs Métrages”, was born with a specific objective: to intercept Gen Z, increasingly accustomed to short, accelerated content consumed in multitasking mode between streaming and social media.
From the big screen to continuous scrolling
The idea starts from a now central fact: a large portion of young viewers say they watch videos, series and even podcasts at an increased speed. The festival therefore tried to transfer this habit directly to the cinema. The effect, however, is radical: faster dialogues, reduced emotional pauses, compressed narrative rhythm.
The result is not just a question of time, but of perception. The tension, the construction of the characters and the depth of the scenes change shape, becoming something different from the original work. Cinema, in this case, is adapted to the language of accelerated digital enjoyment, closer to TikTok and streaming platforms than to the cinematic tradition.
Between curiosity, marketing and cultural provocation
The public reaction was immediate and polarized. Some spectators welcomed the experiment with curiosity, appreciating the possibility of “making up time” without giving up watching. Others spoke of a controversial choice, almost a strain on the language of auteur cinema. Critics and professionals are asking themselves: is this innovation or an excessive compromise?
Also the director of Love Apocalypse he expressed ambivalent feelings, acknowledging the distance between artistic intent and the sped-up version of his film. The debate thus extends beyond the festival, transforming into a broader reflection on the evolution of the audiovisual industry.
The central node: the time of attention
Behind the Canadian experiment lies an increasingly urgent question: what is happening to our attention? Cinema was born as an immersive experience, built on long times, silences and waiting. Accelerating it means redefining the relationship between spectator and story. On the one hand there are those who see these experiments as a way to make cinema more accessible to new generations, without losing them in the infinite flow of digital content. On the other hand there are those who fear an irreversible loss: that of slowness as a space of meaning.
A question that remains open
The Montreal case does not offer a definitive answer, but it opens a front that is destined to grow. If culture adapts completely to the rhythms of Gen Z, does it risk turning into rapid consumption? Or is this precisely the way to prevent cinema from losing its future audience? Perhaps the real issue is not speed, but our ability to choose when to slow down. And in the end an inevitable doubt remains: should cinema chase spectators’ time or continue to ask spectators to stop in its time?
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