Hauris Lalancette

Feature-length documentary on Hauris Lalancette, a Quebecer from Abitibi, who travels and draws surprising parallels between two corners of the country that are considered destitute and left behind. It is also about the search for ancestors and the nostalgia for old jobs that were better, both on the human level and on the technical level.

Meditation on the passage of time, the territory we live in and the ties that bind us. This short film was shot in Quebec in December 2018 between the 48th and 50th parallels.

In the 1930s, in the throes of the Great Depression, the government relocated more than 80,000 citizens to found a new settlement in the virgin forests of Quebec's Abitibi region. After enduring backbreaking work to clear the land, however, many left, seeking a better life in the city or as labourers for the large corporations that had come to exploit the North's valuable resources. The Lalancette family, however, have persisted in forging their future on the land from one generation to the next, earning their keep from farming, and defying the constraints of globalization and the mining and forestry companies that control the area. Revisiting the heritage of Quebec filmmakers who documented Abitibi, following in the footsteps of Pierre Perrault, among others, this documentary traces a defining chapter of Quebec history and raises fundamental questions about regional development.