Agatha Bock (90) lives alone on her ancestral farm. Despite health challenges, she defiantly tends to her land, cultivating heirloom seeds passed down through generations. Employing antiquated techniques, Agatha plants and harvests her expansive field of watermelons, beans, flowers, herbs, and vegetables entirely by hand. Without a car, cell phone, running water, or even a functioning landline, Agatha’s meditative processes and daily rituals form a vivid counterpoint to the rapid pace of contemporary life. Made intentionally with sensory sensitive viewers in mind, the film carves out a (mostly) calm space in a chaotic world.
Over six years of exquisite 16 mm filmmaking, Amalie Atkins captures her aunt Agatha. The film’s analog textures, radiant colors, and seventh-generation spirit draw us into a sensory haven; reviewers called it “charmingly meditative” and “a handcrafted flower in contemporary cinema’s garden.” Premiered at CPH:DOX and Hot Docs, where it took Best Canadian Feature Documentary, the documentary is more than a portrait, it’s an elegy for persistence, the poetry of the everyday, and the inheritance of ways that refuse to vanish.
