Ste. Anne

Director: Rhayne Vermette, Rhayne Vermette

2021 / 80min / DCP

Vermette stars as a long-absent young woman returning to the titular Métis community—and the child she left behind there—in her richly textured, shot-on-16mm feature debut, filmed over a period of 14 months in the director’s native Manitoba in order not only to capture the changing seasons but the manner in which their cycles impact everyday life. Marrying the collage effects explored in her short works with an (admittedly elliptical) narrative through line, Vermette produces an ethereal yet wholly grounded portrait of a community and its annual rhythms whose circular storytelling, per the filmmaker, is an attempt “to break up the three-point narrative… that’s a really colonial construct.”

Introduction and Q&A with filmmaker Rhayne Vermette on Saturday, October 7th at 1:30pm and Sunday, October 8th at 5:45pm, moderated by Inney Prakash Founder/Director of Prismatic Ground Film Festival