Dir: Félix Dufour-Laperrière / 72mins / Canada / 2021

Rotterdam Film Festival – Official Selection

Australian Premiere

“Follow me, I’ll take you to see them all”, a woman’s voice says. She is referring to the Saint Lawrence River and its thousands of islands – real and dreamt. “I’m a capricious guide”, she warns the man, her counterpart. With their dialogue in voice-over, Archipel expands into a semi-fictional odyssey through filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s native province: Quebec, captured in a composition of surprising, creative animation using a wide range of techniques and a partly invented documentary.

At the same time, this true fiction is also a philosophical essay on the question of what makes a piece of land into a region, a community. Does this come into being only when we put it into words, tell its stories? A multifaceted whole is created, made up of poetic musings, old documentary images, contemporary impressions, work and play, as well as recollections of struggle and pain. Inventiveness is shown from the start: the animated silhouette of our guide fills up with a landscape. Seeing as adventure.

Rotterdam Film Festival

Melbourne Design Week Film Festival curated by Richard Sowada