The Family of the Forest

Ger­ard and Cather­ine sac­ri­ficed fam­i­ly, friends and their native Bel­gium to live self-suf­fi­cient­ly in the bore­al for­est of the Gaspé Penin­su­la in Que­bec. 15 years lat­er, as their three sons grow into young adults, what will become of this remark­able life they have giv­en every­thing for? 

SYNOPSIS

Gérard Mathar and Catherine Jacob left their family, their friends and their country to live self-sufficiently in the boreal forest of Gaspésie, Quebec. Now that their sons are adults, will they commit to the same lifestyle as their parents, linked to the forest, the land and the sea? What is it about this life that is worth making all these important sacrifices? What does it really mean to appreciate and live with nature? What can we learn from this inspiring family? With great poetic sensitivity, The Family of the Forest addresses these questions by discovering the Jacob-Mathar family at a turning point: Côme, Ossyane and Jonas must make their own choices about how to live. Gerard and Catherine then make an ambitious plan to keep their sons close to the family and the forest: build a home together with their own hands.

Theme(s) : , Agriculture, Economy, Environnement, Rurality

DIRECTOR

Photo du realisateur

Laura Rietveld

SEE COMPLETE PROFILE

Lau­ra Rietveld is an emerg­ing doc­u­men­tary writer, film­mak­er and win­ner of the Con­seil des arts et des let­tres du Québec — Work by an Emerg­ing Artist Award in Mon­tre­al (2015). In 2010, exas­per­at­ed by the lack of diverse and mean­ing­ful sto­ries told by the main­stream media, Lau­ra resigned from a career in main­stream media. Bound by themes of iden­ti­ty, fam­i­ly and the human-nature con­nec­tion, Lau­ra’s work has been pub­lished in Eng­lish, Inuk­ti­tut and French. Her first doc­u­men­tary, Okpik’s Dream (2015) won the Rigob­er­ta Menchú Grand Prize at the Mon­tre­al’s First Peo­ples Fes­ti­val, an hon­or­able men­tion for the Grand Prize at the Inns­bruck Inter­na­tion­al Nature Fes­ti­val in Aus­tria, and was nom­i­nat­ed for best doc­u­men­tary pro­gram at the Cana­di­an Screen Awards. Her first music video, Broke Down Ski’­Tu­uq, was nom­i­nat­ed for best music video at the Native Amer­i­can Music Awards (2018). Her most recent fea­ture doc­u­men­tary, The Fam­i­ly of the For­est (2022), select­ed for First Pitch at the RIDM Forum (2018) and worked in a work­shop with Sun­dance Col­lab (2021), was near­ly sev­en years in the mak­ing. Lau­ra holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Busi­ness and a BA in His­to­ry from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty, both Ontario insti­tu­tions. She lives in rur­al Que­bec with her young fam­i­ly and chick­ens, sur­round­ed by the nature that nur­tures her.

CREDITS

Director | , Laura Rietveld
Year | , 2022
Country | , Québec
Duration | 85 minutes
Original language | , French
Subtitles | , English
Formats |
Image | Alex Margineanu
Sound | Lynne Trépanier
Sound design | Catherine Van Der Donckt
Sound mixing | Bruno Bélanger
Music | Ramachandra Borcar
Editing | Annie Leclair

MATERIAL

La_famille_de_la_foret_real6219

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