On Club illico from February 9: the “Mégantic” series will tell what we haven’t seen

Quebec was shaken by the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy on July 6, 2013. Images of the explosion and the gigantic fire that killed 47 people in the heart of the Estrie municipality circulated widely. The “Mégantic” series, which will be available on February 9 on Club illico, allows you to experience from the inside what the news channels were unable to show live.

Stories of heroism, resilience and great pain are told in this fiction in eight episodes written by Sylvain Guy (“Confessions of a hired killer”, “Mafia inc.”, “Louis Cyr”), which we reveal the trailer today.

“The real heroes are put forward. They did extremely dangerous and very valuable things that night,” Guy said, speaking of his “toughest” project to date.

“The main theme of the series is the loss of our little everyday life. We have the impression that it is flat, sometimes, but we are well in the background.

Initially, the experienced screenwriter refused to tell the story of the worst rail tragedy in Canadian history, that of a 72-car train carrying more than seven million liters of crude oil which derailed in the Musi sector. -Café, where several of the victims were gathered. “What finally made me want to write ‘Mégantic’ is that I realized that we didn’t know people’s stories.”

The spotlight is on the fateful night and stays away from politics, so then-mayor Colette Roy-Laroche is not on the show. Nor is there any talk of rebuilding the city center, the bypass or the lawsuits.

Both Mr. Guy and ALSO producers Sophie Lorain and Alexis Durand-Brault – the latter also directs the series – have increased their visits to Lac-Mégantic, in a resolutely empathetic approach.

“It’s a tragedy that we saw through the lens of the media, but we didn’t feel what these people had experienced from the inside. This is where we decided to go,” said Sophie Lorain.

Trauma remains vivid for some people. “Even those who got away with it always have tragedy in mind,” according to Sylvain Guy.

“We met people from the local center, in Mégantic, he continued. We talked for a long time, there are even people from this team who were at the Musi-Café that evening. They understand the dynamics so much, it was very useful for me to understand the traumas that people have experienced.

Each episode introduces a new victim, family or heroic person, and the characters intersect thereafter depending on the angle or point of view of the protagonist under the magnifying glass. We also project ourselves in time to find out how people are doing… or not.

Witnesses to the tragedy probably won’t want to relive it through fiction, right? “This is a series that is dedicated to the people of Mégantic, but it is not necessarily intended for them,” said Mr. Guy.

A project in English seems to have made things happen in Quebec. These producers “were not necessarily concerned with the people of Mégantic and were going to build their own version, so there we said: “No, it has to go through us and that we appropriate the good and the worst moments. of Quebec,” said Sophie Lorain.

The filming of “Mégantic” took place in 2021, with some 150 actors, followed by a post-production of more than a year including a lot of special and sound effects.

“We gave ourselves the means, moreover we waited and we worked a long time on the series to have the means to do it, to convince the people around us that it was important, if we wanted to translate the events correctly, that we have the means to do so. So yes, there are a lot of special effects and important sets. We even bought wagons to reproduce the train on fire,” added the producer, who did not hide her international ambitions for “Mégantic”.