Underplayed Gems

Alone (2021)

Alone poster
Directed by
Paul Tom
Genre
documentary film
Country
Canada
Runtime
1h 22m
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

How it feels

The documentary profiles three young adults who came to Canada as unaccompanied refugees. It shows how their past experiences still affect them and how they have built new lives, like one becoming a police officer and another safely living as a bisexual woman.

poignanthopefulintrospectivepersonalquietly resilientvisually blendedreflectivegrounded

What happens

Alone (French: Seuls) is a 2021 Canadian documentary film, directed by Paul Tom. Blending live action with animated sequences, the film profiles Afshin, Alain and Patricia, three young adults who first moved to Canada as refugees, travelling alone without their families. It explores both the lingering effects of their formative experiences and the resilience that allowed them to build new lives in Canada, including Alain pursuing his dream of becoming a police officer and Patricia's appreciation of the fact that she can safely live as a bisexual woman in Canada, which she could not have done in her native Uganda. The film premiered as the opening film of the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie on November 11, 2021, before screening commercially in Quebec beginning November 12. The film received two Prix Iris nominations at the 24th Quebec Cinema Awards in 2022, for Best Documentary Film and Best Original Music in a Documentary (Samuel Laflamme, Dominique Fils-Aimé). Tom and illustrator Mélanie Baillargé subsequently published a book adaptation of the film, under the French title Seuls in 2022 and the English title Alone: The Journey of Three Young Refugees in 2023. The French edition was a Governor General's Award nominee for French-language children's illustration at the 2022 Governor General's Awards. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.