Pascale Bussières plays hunted lawyer in Wiebke von Carolsfeld's Fantasia thriller

Pascale Bussières plays a lawyer cornered in an isolated forest cabin with a man she once defended against sexual assault allegations — and who was acquitted. It's the premise of Someone's Daughter, a new thriller by Montreal filmmaker Wiebke von Carolsfeld, premiering Tuesday at the Fantasia Festival.

The film was inspired by the 2016 Jian Ghomeshi trial, which aired a year before #MeToo exploded. That case raised a question that nagged at von Carolsfeld: Why would a woman defend a man accused of sexual violence? And how far does the presumption of innocence stretch?

"During the Ghomeshi affair, I couldn't understand how a woman could want to represent a man like him," von Carolsfeld said. "I wrote the script to try to understand, and to explore all the nuances it involves."

The film is a contained thriller — just the lawyer and her former client, locked in a cabin. The suspense turns on whether he's truly guilty, and whether she'll survive. But the real tension is ethical. Bussières' character must navigate her own moral code and sense of agency while trapped with someone she helped free.

"What bothers him is that a woman is in charge," Bussières said. "Her moral code has been built around defending the right to law. She's necessarily a somewhat cold person. At the start, she shows a great need for control, but gradually she has to reconnect with..."

Bussières acted in English for the first time in years, a choice that added to her character's hypervigilance. "It made me doubt myself a bit, but I think it ended up serving my character, who is constantly in a state of hypervigilance," she said.

The forest location is in Quebec's Eastern Townships, near Bussières' home. François Arnaud co-stars but couldn't attend the premiere due to other filming commitments. It's Bussières' second collaboration with von Carolsfeld; she had a smaller role in The Saver (2015).