A film inspired by the life and work of Nelly Arcan. Nelly is a portrait of a fragmented woman, lost between irreconcilable identities: writer, lover, call girl, and star. Several women in one, navigating between great exaltation and great disenchantment. The film mirrors the violent life and radical work of its subject, paying tribute to a writer who insisted on taking risks.

The frankness and dramatic weight that writer-director Anne Émond (Nuit #1, Les êtres chers) lends her stories is nothing short of extraordinary. Her third feature, Nelly, one of the most anticipated Canadian films of the year, is made with the same unflinching approach. A creatively imagined biopic of one of the most controversial writers in Quebec's history, Émond's film takes its subject's multi-faceted nature as an inspiration for its very form.

Nelly Arcan (born Isabelle Fortier) published her first novel Putain (Whore) in 2001, and it caused a sensation in the French literary world. Detailing the life of a prostitute named Cynthia, the story was based on Arcan's own experience as a sex worker.