Maison 4:3

VIFF 2025 Review: Death Does Not Exist (La mort n’existe pas)

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Activist Helene is given a second chance in her life after a failed heist in Death Does Not Exist.

The only feature-length animated film I saw at this year’s VIFF is the Canadian French-language film Death Does Not Exist. It is not your typical animated film as it defies expectation.

Helene is part of a group of young radical climate activists. They have the goal of attacking a rich family and brought guns along to make their message heard and to encourage others to follow their act. The attack becomes full-fledged a hail of gunfire on between both the radicals and the family’s bodyguards follow. People on all sides are killed. Helene’s colleagues, the rich family members, the bodyguards, no one is safe. Just as Helene appears to be the only one of the radicals who survives, she runs off into a forest and is completely lost.

The forest she runs into, which is immediately outside the mansion, is treacherous and wild wolves chase her. Lost in the woods, she comes across many wild creatures. The ground is covered with red leaves, resembling the blood of her comrades. In the woods, she comes across wolves chasing after sheep. She senses it’s telling her a message about herself. As she runs away, she falls and knocks herself unconscious.

As she wakes up, she comes across a childhood version of herself. It’s possible she can start a new life. However, she finds Manon: one of her activist comrades who was gunned down. How is she not dead? As Manon makes meat of a rabbit she killed, she makes Helene confront her own cowardice for leaving them all behind to die. She may be unhappy with Helene leaving them behind, but she offers a second chance.

The moment reoccurs again. Helene’s activist group and the rich family are all alive as if the massacre never happened. Will things change? Again, the massacre blows up and all of Helene’s comrades are gunned down. Again, few from the rich family in the golden mansion survive. The grandmother from the wheelchair, the survivor of the rich family Helene noticed most, survives again.

Instead of running into the woods, Helene goes into the mansion. Will shooting the woman be what she needs to do? It is there that the mansion becomes a forest or jungle of its own with the animals themselves also resembling characters of Helene. Helene soon confronts the grandmother in the wheelchair and has a message to give to her that stuns her. Soon after, Helene confronts an older version of herself and received messages from her. She then moves into images of the future, including one of the mansion being swallowed by the ground and flowers growing where it once stood. The film ends with message Manon delivers at the end.

The film does have a message. It’s that we’ve always lived in a world full of opposites, especially in terms of beliefs and convictions. It’s just now people on either side don’t talk. They just promote their belief and vilify those that believe otherwise. The massacre at the beginning is symbolic of such a situation as incidents that have happened in the past and what could happen in the future if we’re not careful. The world may be in crisis right now, but violence is simply making things worse.

Often the point of this film is that you should stand for what’s right but be cautious about your own actions at the same time. With Helene as the central character, it’s Helene’s consciousness that needs to be examined and exposed to her as she runs away. She’s exposed to her moral weaknesses and what she failed to become, but she also is shown enlightened images of what could happen, if she gets a second chance.

The film does a good job of being picturesque and telling in its imagery. Its images do catch your eye and can captivate the audience, but it can also lead them astray as they watch the story. Often there’s too much imagery happening and it doesn’t always make sense of whether the film is trying to tell a story or dazzle the viewer. Often, the audience can be led astray and become confused of what the whole message is. It does have a lot to say in both dialogue and imagery. It just doesn’t do it in too orderly of a fashion.

This is a good feature-length film directed by Felix Dufour-Laperriere. He’s had over 20 years of experience directing and producing animated film with 2021’s Archipelago being his biggest. Here, he creates a film that is so full of imagery, it took four years to complete. A lot of the imagery works in telling the story, while a lot of it can also lead the viewer astray. It is well done, but its imperfections are noticeable. Zeneb Blanchet does an excellent job in voicing Helene. She is good at capturing Helene’s confusions and insecurities well. She’s also great at making the character of Helene one of the best qualities of the film.

Death Does Not Exist is a slow and confusing animated film, but it’s also very picturesque. It deals with a deep subject matter and a deep message and allows the audience an escape to the beyond as images most tell its intended message.

VIFF 2020 Review: Call Me Human (Je m’appelle humain)

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Call Me Human is an intimate look at Innu poet Josephine Bacon and her past and present life that makes for her poetry.

I’m glad I started my last day of the VIFF watching the documentary Call Me Human. I never knew of poet Josephine Bacon until I saw it. I’m glad I did.

The film is an intimate look at poet Josephine Bacon. It’s also a look at the friendship between her and the documentary’s director Kim O’Bomsawin. She was born in Innu territory in Pessamit, Quebec. Like other Innu children in her community, she was forced to grow up in the Residential School system in Canada. It was there she endured the abuses and the pressures to abandon her culture and language. Her young adult years would mean trying to make a living. She’d escape her village to live in Montreal, sometimes sleeping with her friend in abandoned places. She would find work as a director and lyricist. She would work as a translator and interpreter with Elders and would listen to their words closely.

It wouldn’t be until after she turned 60 that she learned that she was a poet. She feels she’s not a poet. She feels she has a natural way of storytelling. Her first collection of poetry would not be published until 2009. It was in both French and Innu and it received renown for its importance of cultural preservation and storytelling. Bacon has continued to have poetry books published. She has won numerous literary awards such as the Prix des Libraires de Quebec, the Indigenous Voices Award, and the Order of Montreal.

The film is more than a biography. The film also features a lot of imagery of Josephine as she goes to various places. She’s often seen with other members of her Innu community. It is there she senses a culture whose traditions and ways of life are dying as the younger Innu are more modernized. She is seen looking out to the natural landscapes. It is in her and her culture that she has this feeling. She is seen at places of her past. It is there where she tells of her past history, both bad and good. She is seen over at a friend’s house for a dinner on Innu-cooked fish. It is there we see the life-long connections she established.

The intention of the film is not just to get us to learn who Josephine is, but to experience what it is that makes her poetry. We see Josephine in many dimensions. She calmly tells the stories of her life, but you can tell when heartbreak is in her, even when she doesn’t show it. We see her looking out to nature both with awe, admiration and sadness. She loves the beauty but she quietly hurts because it is stolen land. Her readings of her poems are done across a lot of imagery from landscape images to personal images to animation. Her poems may be in French or in Innu. All of which paint a picture of who Josephine is and how she finds her voice.

The appearance of the Innu ways is as important as Josephine’s use of the Innu language in some of her poems. Innu is a language spoken by only 10,000. The Innu ways were common before residential schooling tried to get children to abandon. Now the difficulty is modernism. There’s fear the traits and traditions will be lost. That’s why Josephine’s poems are so important. They keep the Innu language and the Innu ways of expression alive. That has a lot to do with why she has won so many awards. Those who see this documentary will be lucky to meet a gem of a talent.

Top respect goes to director Kim O’Bomsawin. Kim is not just the director of the film but comes across as a friend. She helps Josephine as she goes from place to place. She even helps with radio interviews, visiting friends and is there who Josephine accepts an award. Kim does an excellent job of showcasing Josephine’s poetic voice as well as the land that Josephine embraces and the traditions she tries to keep alive.

Call Me Human is more than a documentary about a Canadian poet. It’s also about a people and a way of life that was suppressed and oppressed at first but is now experiencing a revival thanks to people like Josephine.