Anne Trister

A Swiss Jewish artist who is grieving her father, moves to Montreal and forms a friendship with a child psychiatrist. While creating an installation in an abandoned warehouse, she confronts her past and is increasingly drawn to her friend.

The film premiered on February 3, 1986, in Quebec,^[2] and was screened in competition at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.^[3]

Ron Base of the Toronto Star wrote that the film " is as pristine and as empty as a modern art gallery at midnight. It is a film about emotion, empty of emotion. An art movie without art. Humorless. And vague. Introverted beyond hope, lost somewhere deep in its own pretensions." He concluded that "when Anne Trister is not putting you to sleep, there are moments of beauty and emotion. Much of the time, though, it is back to a studied, almost smug self-consciousness in a world overlapping and intertwined, delicately exploring the many imponderable forms of love. The exploration is not successful."^[4]

Noel Taylor of the Ottawa Citizen wrote that "there's no denying Anne Trister is technically an accomplished work, but its skill is more clinical than visceral. It excites admiration for Pool, the film-maker, without arousing much interest in Pool, the person. I would have liked to discover more."^[5]

For the Montreal Gazette, Bruce Bailey wrote that "while Pool's talent for spareness and subtlety is carried over from that film to Anne Trister, this latest effort suffers to at least some extent from slow pacing and an arty pretentiousness that is at times almost laughable."^[2]

• List of LGBT-related films directed by women