Director: Pier-Philippe Chevigny
Inside a food-processing plant in rural Quebec, language becomes a tool of control long before anyone raises a hand.
What is Richelieu about?
Ariane Castellanos plays a bilingual interpreter hired to bridge French-speaking management and a crew of seasonal Guatemalan laborers. The work starts as routine translation, but she is quickly pulled between two loyalties: the instructions handed down by her employer, and the mounting hardship she witnesses among the workers she is meant to simply relay orders to. As unsafe conditions and unfair treatment pile up, she has to decide whether her role is to translate words or to intervene on behalf of people who have no other voice in the room.
Cast & crew
Ariane Castellanos anchors the film as the interpreter caught in the middle, playing conflicted loyalty without turning the character into a simple hero. Marc-André Grondin appears on the management side of the plant, while Nelson Coronado, Luis Oliva and Gerardo Miranda bring the seasonal workforce to life with performances that feel lived-in rather than staged for sympathy.
Context & significance
Director Pier-Philippe Chevigny builds the film around a labor arrangement that genuinely exists across Canadian agriculture and food processing: seasonal workers, mostly from Central America, hired on contracts that leave them dependent on their employer for housing, transport and continued work. Richelieu, a co-production between Canada, France and Guatemala, uses that real structure as its backdrop rather than inventing a fictional company, which gives the plant-floor and dormitory scenes an unusually grounded, near-documentary feel. The film premiered in 2023 and drew festival attention for its quiet, procedural approach to a subject that could easily have been played as a simple morality tale.
Where & how to watch
Richelieu is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, presented with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles so the French and Spanish dialogue is fully accessible in Farsi. K-Time's interface is built around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking audiences, making a smaller festival drama like this one as easy to find and watch as any major release.