Portrait of a Perfect Stranger

Apart in life, drawn together by death. In this moving short film, Claude Guilmain goes to meet a stranger: his brother. A year after seeing his brother alive for the last time, the filmmaker encountered him on his death bed. Portrait of a Perfect Stranger delicately retraces the brief life of a man whose life was cut short by alcoholism and by the cancer that struck just when he was getting himself back together.

Using the revealing testimony of a friend of André's youth and of a fellow traveller on André's path of rehabilitation, Claude Guilmain follows the footsteps of this mysterious brother whom he never really knew. Conveyed by a beautiful narration, Portrait of a Perfect Stranger pays touching tribute to a man who lost his way but had the strength to get back on track. Between archival images of a young, smiling André and the poetic account of his last moments, this bittersweet film captures the fragility of human life, with its defeats and triumphs.