“One sole being is missing, and the world is a desert,” wrote Lamartine (translation from Gérard Genette).

It’s this kind of unfillable void that the great filmmaker Peter Wintonick left behind after his sudden disappearance in 2013. Affectionately dubbed the “patron saint of documentary film,” this giant of the documentary world, a clear-eyed idealist who was able to preserve his sense of childlike wonder, was a major role model for many in the Canadian and international documentary scene. A devoted artist and a generous, passionate and playful colleague, Wintonick left a mark on many through his profoundly human body of work and his legendary sense of care.

Drawing from her personal archives, memories and other traces—including raw footage from his unfinished film Utopia—his daughter Mira digs into the question of what is left after a loved one disappears. This comprehensive approach to the rituals of grief is laid bare for the viewer in a touching posthumous dialogue between the filmmaker and her father. With the help of priceless archives that allow her to rediscover her father figure, recontextualize some painful moments of her family history and transcend the simple paying of respects, she brings us on a retrospective journey within herself. Each archival image of her father is treated with infinite tenderness, like a painstakingly unearthed relic, and selected either to reveal a hidden truth or demonstrate the power of premonitions. In pursuing the quest of her father, a modern Don Quixote indefatigably searching for this unattainable ideal, his Utopia, Mira—miraculously—seems to reach destination. Wintopia is a film that opens us up to new possibilities, sensitizes us to the beauty of the world, and, more than ever, inspires us to embrace life. And Papa Pete, after watching his daughter’s film, would surely say with a twinkle in his eye: “Finally! I’ve found it!”

Jason Burnham
Tënk's programming assistant