Synopsis
Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere collaborate with Quebecois film star Roy Dupuis on this documentary about environmental advocacy. The film is a critique of Hydro-Quebec’s Romaine River initiative, a plan to construct four dams along the 500-kilometer waterway. It’s also a story of devolution from social democratic ideals to greed and environmental destructiveness.
A word from Tënk
Magpie River (MR) addresses Romaine River (RR): "Have you seen the latest documentary by Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere with Roy Dupuis Après la Romaine (2023) which has just been released? You're no longer the star, I, the Magpie, am!”
RR: "Yeah, fifteen years after Seeking the Current (2008); my reign as star river was short indeed! But you, you took a long time to sink into the casting agencies before attracting attention?”
MR: "Jealous! Seriously, what did you think of this story told in 2023?”
RR: "In Seeking the Current, humans were still too concerned with their personal comfort to feel the impact of their relentless appetite for mass production. For me, it is too late. I have been domesticated for a long time and I have lost many friends in my ecosystem. But you, you have been protected from the appetites of harnessing with impunity, it seems!”
MR: "Yeah, maybe. However, being in the hands of human legislation is not reassuring."
RR: "I understand. But in the meantime, maybe that's the best that can happen to you, right?”
Silence. Water flowing.
RR: "One day, do you think that humans will stop this mania of ensnaring us with their laws and their dams? Will they ever break away from naturalism, you know that separation between nature and humans evoked by the anthropologist Descola? Will they manage to feel that we flow… in their veins?”
MR: "Um… I will drink to that!"
Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker