27/04/2023 - The French-Canadian co-production by Justine Harbonnier shows the daily life of Caiti, musician and waitress in her spare time, as she tries to take back control over her life

The feature debut from French director Justine Harbonnier, which had its world premiere at Visions du réel in the Burning Lights section, is screening at Hot Docs and is now selected in l’ACID at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, is a profound film which reminds us that to find the truth, one must look inside, even when doing so can be difficult and painful. Thanks to a charismatic and touching character who seems to come straight from the mind of the Safdie brothers, Caiti Blues [+see also:
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The powerful and soothing voice of Caiti Lord, a thirty-year-old musician who works as a waitress to make ends meet, accompanies local radio listeners and listeners in Madrid, New Mexico. Originally from New York, Caiti moved a little bit by chance to this small hippie town in the Southeastern United States, and is now trying to make sense of a life that is getting out of hand. Between two songs, she confesses to her audience the difficulties she has to face every day in the bar where she works, her deepest anxieties or simply the fear of not making it. Light years away from achieving an American dream that has become an absurd chimera, the protagonist of Caiti Blues tries to rebel against the absurdity of a life that is starting to get to her. Her childhood and adolescence in New York, filled with sequins and musical comedies, DIY shows where she could play the diva and opera singing courses, are now a distant memory.

Like many young Americans, Caiti tries as best she can to repay a college loan that keeps increasing due to inflation. At thirty years old, faced with a brutal world where surviving as an artist is becoming increasingly difficult, Caiti decides to change registers (musical and otherwise): the blues will now be her creed. The winter cold and the pastel tones of the surrounding nature replace the blinding lights of New York, helping her reconnect with her own sense of self, which she had lost. Surrounded by outsiders who refuse, like her, to bow to the capitalist motto that "will is power," Caiti searches for her own inner truth, the sacred fire that transforms art into a cathartic act.

Justine Harbonnier shows us the private life of Caiti in all its nuances: the hours spent in front of the microphone of the local independent radio, in the bar where she works, within the reassuring walls of her home while sleeping with her dog or composing her songs, or even while tries to forget the problems of everyday life in the arms of her drag queen friends. The story of the protagonist is told and saved in the lyrics of her songs. Through these intimate diaries, in which she sublimates a sometimes suffocating reality, Caiti talks to us about universal themes such as self-acceptance, the weight of social norms and the difficulty of finding one's place in an ideologically oppressive and conservative country.

Caiti Blues is one of those “feel good movies” that make you understand that it's okay to be an outsider, that fame isn't for everyone, and so much the better. Without judgments or false moralism, Justine Harbonnier elevates Caiti to the rank of guru for all those who rebel by asserting their sacrosanct right to be "abnormal."

Caiti Blues was produced by La Cinquième Maison (Quebec) with Sister Productions (France) and is sold internationally by Canada’s Les Films du 3 Mars.

(Translated from Italian)