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Léolo

1992 film by Jean-Claude Lauzon

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ1879405
Source-derived summary

Léolo is a 1992 Canadian coming-of-age fantasy comedy-drama written and directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon. The film tells the story of a young boy named Léo "Léolo" Lauzon, played by Maxime Collin, who engages in an active fantasy life while growing up with his Montreal family, and begins to have sexual fantasies about his neighbour Bianca, played by Giuditta del Vecchio. The film also stars Ginette Reno, Pierre Bourgault, Andrée Lachapelle, Denys Arcand, Julien Guiomar, and Germain Houde. Gilbert Sicotte narrates the film as the adult Léolo.

With a story developed by Lauzon as a semi-autobiographical work, the project was supported by producer Lyse Lafontaine as a co-production with France. Filming took place in Montreal and Sicily in 1991. It was Lauzon's second and final film, as he died in a plane crash in 1997 while working on his next project.

Initially released in the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, Léolo won three Genie Awards, including Best Original Screenplay for Lauzon, losing Best Motion Picture to Naked Lunch. It later benefited from a resurgence of interest, leading to critics and filmmakers adding it to the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time in 2015. The film also influenced the naming of the movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, when site co-creator Senh Duong decided upon the site name while viewing the film.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Léolo” is 1992 film by Jean-Claude Lauzon. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Léolo, film and Jean-Claude, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 1991, 1997, 2015—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1992-01-01, 1993-01-07—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Léolo, film and Jean-Claude is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1992 film by Jean-Claude Lauzon” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1879405. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1991, 1997 and 2015.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Léolo”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Léolo primary sources, Léolo archive and Léolo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Léolo”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Léolo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.