A Friendship Through Film is a collection of pictures taken during the production of the film Mommy.

Shayne Laverdière and Xavier Dolan meet in the late 2000s.

The photographer, an assistant at the time, begins his career through miscellaneous gigs. The director, recently revealed by his first two films, is looking for a new headshot, his last casting photo having been taken by a friend when he was sixteen…

Two emerging artists meet, and become inseparable for the years to come.

What begins as an impromptu photo shoot at the abandoned Empress Cinema in Montreal, left in ruins in a neighbourhood Dolan grew up in, becomes recurring in a matter of months. Soon enough, the semi-conscious choice of the outdated location for their first session finds a deeper meaning when they decide that the images they make together should be, like the movies “of old”, photographed on film.

After years of shooting paper interviews and local magazine covers together, the filmmaker asks Laverdière to join him as a set photographer on his fifth feature film…

When the movie is selected to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, Laverdière, naturally, follows the team along their odyssey on the Croisette.

Through previously unseen images and over several hundred pages, this book documents the life and journey of a film, from its creation to its celebration; the confirmation of a friendship, in art and passion.