I Lost Sight of the Landscape

Canadian film director Sophie Bédard Marcotte is going through a break-up and a creative crisis. Her neighbour, theatre director Gabriel Charlebois-Plante, is simultaneously getting started with his own work on the myth of Sisyphus. After winding up in the underworld, Sisyphus was ordered to push a boulder up a steep hill for eternity. Upon reaching the top the boulder would always roll downhill again. Indeed, that is what making art feels like sometimes.

For several years, Marcotte films two artistic processes in parallel: that of her own and that of Charlebois-Plante, who agrees to star in the film. Charlebois-Plante’s crew works with rocks, the play seeks its path. The actors go out in the field to get in touch with rocks and the director orders tons and tons of rocks to the studio. Ideas are rejected in tandem with new ones being born. Following a similar beat, Marcotte starts her film over and over again – we see a total of 16 different beginnings.

The film’s layered structure is in service to its subject matter: the myth of repetition that brings about theatre that brings about cinema. The film is not lacking in humour, either. At times the course of life forces people to change their plans. A pandemic spreads, a premiere is postponed, people fall in love, they have children, yet the creative process continues. This intimate and open documentary manages to capture moments of making art that are rarely seen by the public.

Laura Manninen (translated by Nooa Karlo)

Director Sophie Bédard Marcotte will attend the film screening on 8 Feb.