1999

A wave of teenage suicides in 1999 left a small community outside Moncton, New Brunswick, in shock and silence, unable to ask unanswerable questions. Sixteen years later, filmmaker Samara Grace Chadwick returns to former classmates, teachers and friends, gently revisiting their collective past and fractured memories. What can they remember? How much did they need to forget? Focused on the survivors, this elegiac essay addresses the grief that has gripped their lives and their hope of closure and healing. During their most formative years, the traumatic events they witnessed indelibly shaped their futures. Now as adults, the hallways, lockers and parking lots of their youth remain largely unchanged and are constant, inescapable reminders. Snapshots, diaries and VHS tapes of another era integrate into achingly honest and deeply affecting observations about coming of age amidst so many who could not bear to face another day. (Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival)