Le temps des sucres

Cultured, sensitive and resolutely urban, Guillaume Lacerte is dumbfounded to learn that the death of his estranged father has made him the beneficiary of a family sugar-bush deep in the Quebec countryside. For his paternal family, the funeral is an opportunity to introduce this young man to his ancestral home—where his progenitor mysteriously lost his life—as well as to a plethora of bizarre rituals and strange traditions centred around the veneration of maple syrup and a hyper-masculine way of life. Forest initiations, orgies of meat and unchecked brawls soon transform the refined bookseller into a raw, virile male. That is, until the secret of the Lacertes’ fabulous maple syrup comes to light, revealing to Guillaume just how far these men will go to dominate the nature that surrounds them.

Le temps des sucres is a folk-horror fable as troubling as it is hilarious, skewering both the cult of terroir and contemporary calls for a return to extreme masculinity.