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1999 - WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Samara Chadwick

synopsis

At the Mathieu-Martin High School in Moncton (Canada), a wave of suicides hit the class of 1999. Today, Samara returns to the town where she grew up to question her former classmates who, like her, were strongly marked by this tragic episode. So, in the well-known setting of American TV series and other “Teen Movies”, Samara conducts her personal and identity-based investigation. Empty corridors during lessons, rows of metal lockers, and large bay windows that open up onto the snow-covered courtyard on the edge of the forest… A typical high school in a provincial town in which teenage crisis is perhaps more difficult to get through than elsewhere, and perhaps even more so in this French-speaking town not far from the border with the United States. To bring the ghosts of the past back to life, she brings out old diaries and VHS cassettes of singing in the theatre; all these little things, these memories we cling on to, in sorrow and in grief, in order to regain the energy of life.

original title: 1999 - Wish You Were Here
country: Canada, Switzerland
sales agent: CAT&Docs
year: 2018
genre: documentary
directed by: Samara Chadwick
film run: 90'
producer: Urs Augstburger, Aline Schmid, Sven Wälti, Selin Murat
production: SRF - Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, Beauvoir Films, SRG SSR, Office national du film du Canada (CA)

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