Absences (2013)

Directed by

Carole Laganière

Genre

documentary film

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 14m

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Canadian documentary about people dealing with the unresolved absence of loved ones. The director interweaves her own experience with her mother's Alzheimer's with stories of a woman searching for a missing sister, a Croatian immigrant seeking her birth mother, and a writer exploring his unknown family roots.

contemplativepoignantreflectiveintimatebittersweetquietthoughtfulgentle

What happens

Absences is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Carole Laganière and released in 2013. Based in part on Laganière's relationship with her mother, whose memory was fading due to Alzheimer's disease, the film profiles three people who are coping with the unresolved absence of loved ones from their lives, while also reflecting on her own sense of loss. The participants are Nathalie Bergeron, a woman whose sister Marilyn went missing several years earlier and has never been found; Ines Hajrovic, a Croatian immigrant to Canada who is searching for the birth mother who abandoned her; and writer Deni Ellis Béchard, who is looking for information about his family history after having grown up in English Canada and the United States without much connection to his paternal French Canadian roots in Quebec. The film premiered at the 2013 Montreal World Film Festival, before going into commercial release in September. At the 2013 Quebec City Film Festival, it won the Public Prize for Canadian films. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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