General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Night Logan Woke Up

The Night Logan Woke Up (La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s'est réveillé) is a 2022 French-language Canadian television miniseries in five episodes, written and directed by Xavier Dolan as his first television work, adapted from Michel Marc Bouchard's 2019 stage play of the same name.¹^•² It follows the Larouche family of a small Quebec town, whose lives are shattered by an act of violence on an October night in 1991 and reunited thirty years later by the death of the family matriarch.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s'est réveillé, adapted from Michel Marc Bouchard's play¹
Format	Five episodes of roughly 50 minutes to one hour; Dolan wrote, directed, produced, and acted²^•⁴
Central event	On an October night in 1991, Laurier Gaudreault, not yet 17, rapes his friend's 14-year-old sister Mireille, breaking two families apart¹
Main cast	Julie Le Breton (Mireille), Patrick Hivon (Julien), Éric Bruneau (Denis), Xavier Dolan (Elliot), Magalie Lépine-Blondeau (Chantal), Anne Dorval (Madeleine)⁵
First release	Club illico (Canada), November 24, 2022⁴^•⁶
Awards	Six Prix Gémeaux, including Best Direction, Best Leading Role (Hivon), and Best Supporting Role (Dorval)⁷
Critical score	71% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (7 reviews); 80% audience score⁶

Spoilers

Plot

In the early 1990s, Mireille, her older brother Julien, and their best friend Laurier form an inseparable trio in their Quebec hometown. The boys have just won the provincial baseball championship and dream of leaving for the United States. On an October night in 1991, Laurier rapes Mireille; he is not yet 17 and she is 14. The two families, previously close, are broken, and Mireille soon leaves home vowing never to return.¹

Thirty years later, Mireille, now a renowned thanatologist (a specialist in the care of the dead), returns at her dying mother Madeleine's request to embalm her body. She rejoins her brothers: Julien, the eldest, with his wife Chantal; Denis; and Elliot, a recovering addict who lived with their mother. The reunion reopens old grievances and buried secrets, and the siblings pursue truth and reconciliation amid the mourning.¹^•³

The five episode titles each name a night of revelation: "The Night Madeleine Died," "The Night Mireille Came Back," "The Night Chantal Understood," "The Night Julien Got Scared," and "The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up."⁵

Production

Québecor Contenu announced the project on November 24, 2020 as Dolan's first fiction series, which he would direct and write, produced with Nancy Grant and Jasmyrh Lemoine of Nanoby. CANAL+ co-produced and broadcast the series in France, and StudioCanal handled international distribution.¹ Several cast members, including Julie Le Breton, Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Éric Bruneau, and Patrick Hivon, had appeared in the 2019 stage production.⁸

The score is by Hans Zimmer and David Fleming, and the cinematography is by André Turpin, Dolan's longtime collaborator; the first episode also uses Rufus Wainwright's recording of "Quand vous mourez de nos amours."⁹ Dolan described the shoot, apart from a long post-production, as the most galvanizing and formative experience of his career.¹⁰

Release and reception

The series premiered on Club illico in Canada on November 24, 2022, aired on CANAL+ in France from January 23, 2023, and reached Netflix in the United States on October 18, 2023; it later streamed in the United Kingdom on Studiocanal Presents from November 1, 2024.⁴^•¹¹ The first two episodes screened in the Indie Episodic program at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023.⁹

Critics responded strongly to the ensemble. Patrick Hivon and Anne Dorval won Gémeaux Awards for their performances as Julien and Madeleine, and the series took six Prix Gémeaux in total, including Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music.⁴^•⁷ Le Monde called it a funereal, violent family melodrama in which a family secret acts as slow poison across three decades, praising the cast and Dolan's handling of time shifts.¹² Reviewers also noted the nonlinear structure, cutting between 1991 and the present, and the tonal mix of horror, humor, and drama.¹³^•¹⁴ On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds 71% among critics and 80% among audiences.⁶

The stage play

The source is Michel Marc Bouchard's play La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s'est réveillé, which Dolan saw in June 2019 and immediately chose as his next project.¹ A separate filmed stage production of the play, directed by Didier Brengarth with a French cast including Marie Montoya and Julien Personnaz, was captured in 2025 at Studio 44 and scheduled for broadcast on France 4 and france.tv.¹⁵ Dolan had previously adapted another Bouchard play, Tom à la ferme, into a 2013 feature film.²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026