The Cost of Heaven (Mathieu Denis, 2025): Canada

Reviewed by Margarita Bergquist. Viewed at SBIFF.

By the end of The Cost of Heaven it’s hard to retain the opening statement that it is inspired by a real story, such a compelling job was done by director Mathieu Denis, his cinematographer Sara Mishara and composer Olivier Alary to dramatize it. This psychological thriller challenges us to consider how we define success through money and how easy it is to find oneself in a quicksand of ever multiplying debt trying to make it in the contemporary society built around worshipping financial wealth. As the main character Nacer Belkacem (Samir Guesmi) explains while performing a coin disappearance magic trick: “The problem with money is that you lose it as quickly as you get it. And when you have it, it works for you. But when you don’t, you work for it”. He sees himself as a loser, holding a not-quite-managerial office job while about to turn 50, struggling to pay for exclusive private education for his three kids and ashamed to be seen by wealthier people in his perceived poverty.

This wounded part of Nacer makes him vulnerable to the detrimental influence of the “Oracle of Canada” Ben Novak, a self-made billionaire and investor whose YouTube interviews Nacer watches obsessively dreaming of replicating his success. We are introduced to Nacer as a character through a remarkably performed sequence of him pretend-calling “Santa’s Workshop” to correct his prior “mistake” and order presents for each member of his family, elegantly learning from them what they actually want. The scene instantly warms us up to this man, full of humor and palpable love for his wife and children. Our compassion is further strengthened when we hear about him consistently being passed over for a promotion despite serving his company longer than others and training his own superiors. Nacer speculates that the reason behind this is his ethnic background, raising a question of hidden racism in the workplace. He is by no means a poor person, but as it always happens when you view your life’s achievements through the lens of a bank account statement, no amount of money is ever enough.

This internal conflict leads Nacer into a quickly developing trap of his own making. He lets himself believe he knows how to gamble on the stock market and swiftly digs himself a hole as big as his desperation to maintain an image of a well-to-do man. There is a particularly revealing scene in the first half of the film that shows Nacer sneaking into a bedroom of a fancy house he gets invited to. His fascination with an expensive watch collection, shot with an intimacy usually reserved for human interaction, is juxtaposed with an innocent joy of a child playing with a pile of autumn leaves outside the house. It makes Nacer a controversial character that we could harshly judge until we start recognizing more and more of ourselves in him.

Overall, the film is masterfully made to maintain our compassion for the protagonist while being on the edge witnessing the ground being pulled from under his feet. It is filled with extremely controlled camera movements at the beginning with steady cam overtaking the climactic second part where through a very intentional and very pronounced oblique angle we watch in disbelief how the character makes choices that could only be explained by utter despair.

Coming back to the inspiration behind The Cost of Heaven, there is a particular weight added to this film by director Mathieu Denis pushing the story further than it really happened. As revealed during a Q&A at a Santa Barbara International Film Festival screening, the director explored a huge gap that is usually left untouched in similar stories – how the protagonist is supposed to behave if his most outrageous plan works out? What do you do next? And could this success become that very sobering moment that brings one back to reality? A beautiful exploration of moral dilemmas that are faced in one way or another by everyone in this highly competitive capitalistic world.