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Archive
85 min
Quebec, 2022

Production : Catbird Productions
French
English

Environment



Synopsis


Gérard and Catherine left Belgium to live self-sufficiently in the boreal forest of Gaspésie, Quebec. Fifteen years later, as their three boys have grown up, what will become of this way of life?

A word from Tënk


 "The idea is that you have to learn to be independent again," says the father of this family. 

That sums up the story. Re-learning, or learning, or initiating oneself to that which has strayed away from us, or from which we ourselves have inextricably moved away: autonomy. Starting by weaving the lost bond with Nature, with Food, with Animals, with the Living.  

Along the way, in this trail of modernity, we believed that autonomy was simply an individual capacity to make decisions to satisfy one's own needs, whereas autonomy, as recounted here, appears as an encounter with what surrounds and inhabits us, and a reawakening of our practical knowledge.

We used to believe that freedom meant freeing ourselves from dependencies. The policies of neoliberalism have promised us certain misguided pleasures, as we can see today. Recognizing that the land we inhabit nourishes us and shelters humans and animals seems to be the most (geo)political act of all. This film plunges us into this aperture of possibility (which is different for each one of us) and becomes a kind of concrete bridge to resilience.

 

Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker


 

Presented in collaboration with

 

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Item 1 of 4