Marcel LaBelle

Montreal, My Beautiful (Montréal, ma belle, dir. Xiaodan He) x WIFF 2026.

Screen legend Joan Chen stars as a Chinese immigrant mother living in the titular French-Canadian metropolitan city who engages in a steamy same-sex affair later in life with a vibrant, young Québécoise woman (Charlotte Aubin). This puts her traditional family situation in turmoil while she enjoys her newfound menopausal sexual freedom. She struggles to juggle her marital and parental responsibilities with the carefree romantic yearning of new love. Director He builds a complex portrait of womanhood that balances strong Eastern culture with familiar Western ideals fluidly.

Winner of the Best Canadian Film prize at the 2026 Windsor International Film Festival.

Bound: I Am Not Who I Became by mab_di

Typeset, bind, and illustrations by: me, @phoenixortheflame.

Draco left England after the trials and has travelled the world meeting wizards and Muggles from different cultures and with vastly different relationships to magic, each other, and the natural world. Now he's a fisherman in Finland on commercial vessels. Harry has been struggling since the war and has become a recluse while trying to write his autobiography. An invitation to the Hogwarts class of 1998's 15th reunion isn't welcomed by either of them, but neither could predict how the night, and their reunion, will upend their lives.

I made this bind for a friend who wanted me to surprise her with a Drarry bind of my choice. I'd had I Am Not Who I Became on my list for a while, because I just knew it would lend itself to some really beautiful imagery.

In the fic, Draco teaches Harry to fly fish, and so I instantly had the idea to draw a unique fly for each chapter head (there are 15 total), which I also included on the dust jacket.

I've been wanting to push myself to include more original art in my designs, and this was the perfect opportunity to practice my drawing on something low-stakes. It took me just under a month to draw all the flies, in between binding and writing and watching Severance.

I've been really loving the printable canvas for wrap covers, and I found this piece of public domain art titled "Cleaning Fish" by George Bellows which, in my opinion, fits the theme perfectly. I was going to do gold HTV on the spine, but decided against it since the art is so beautiful.

I think I'm finally getting better at endbands, but I still hate doing them just the same. @sits-bound introduced me to a new technique, which you'll see in my upcoming bind. In the meantime, this is a faux double-core endband, which I achieved using @maleekamolscreates amazing tutorial.

I had to gild the edges, because gold. I used Liquitex Iridescent Bright Gold acrylic ink and I highly suggest doing at least a bit of a sand before you apply to keep it from flaking too much, even if you do have a guillotine.

The endpapers are chiyogami paper, which might be my favourite paper to work with. The colours are so rich, and the patterns are so striking. This one in particular was made for this book.

I kept the typeset simple so as to show off the flies. Though I really like the vertical chapter titles, which I think add a modern touch to an otherwise pretty classic overall aesthetic.

As always, I made a copy of this fic for the author. And one for me, too.

All copies were gifts and no money was exchanged.