Through animation, the filmmaker creates a presence-absence that materializes in the nexus. Not just in the conversation between father and son, or in the photographs articulated via drawings, but in the cross-pollination of these different elements. This frictional materiality allows us to move beyond the intimate and cathartic, expressing the creative violence of being with others. It's the birth of the middle name, the one that's not given but rather presented to the other, offered with a voice, gestures, and sensibility. This look at oneself and one's history reshuffles the cards of time: we are no longer in a walled-in past, present, or future, but well and truly in a stride, the future as the next second, the one that brings us closer to leaving the forest. This horizon might be unstable and shady - because it's unknown - but it is also oh so alive!

"Of course, those multiple scarves and the memories remained knotted, but it was as if the past had to shine as brightly, as intensely, as the present where they were no longer there." (Alain Damasio, The Horde of Counterwind.)

Rémi Journet
Tënk Canada's editorial assistant