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Samara Grace Chadwick travels back to Moncton’s École Mathieu-Martin to revisit a traumatic past. International premiere for powerful NFB-co-produced feature doc 1999 at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel.

PRESS RELEASE
15/03/2018

March 15, 2018 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Samara Grace Chadwick’s National Film Board of Canada co-produced feature documentary 1999 (Parabola Films/Beauvoir Films/NFB) will have its international premiere at Switzerland’s prestigious Visions du Réel International Film Festival, April 13 to 21.

In 1999, director Chadwick returns to the city she fled as a teen, when a wave of suicides at École Mathieu-Martin in Moncton, dubbed “Suicide High,” took the lives of multiple students. Impassioned, impressionistic, poetic and deeply intimate, 1999 follows Chadwick as she revisits those traumatic events, joining with peers to bear witness to a time when every instant of their adolescent lives felt overwhelming and when their entire community teetered on the brink—as together they find strength in sharing long-silenced memories.

1999 is produced by Parabola Films (Selin Murat and Sarah Spring) in co-production with Beauvoir Films (Aline Schmid) and the NFB (Kat Baulu from the Quebec and Atlantic Studio and Jac Gautreau from the Canadian Francophonie Studio – Acadie), in collaboration with Radio-Canada Acadie (Marie-Claude Dupont), CALQ, and SODEC, and supported internationally by Eurimages through Telefilm Canada. The film features an original score by Swiss musician Cyril Hahn as well as Acadian musicians Gabriel Malenfant of the group Radio Radio and Vivianne Roy of Hay Babies.

A Canada/Switzerland co-production, the film will be screening in the National Competition at Visions du Réel. 1999 opened in Montreal at Les Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, following a special community screening in Moncton.

Samara Grace Chadwick grew up in Moncton, New Brunswick, and left the city at age 16. She earned a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and has spent more than 15 years working in the field of documentary film throughout Europe and North and South America, primarily as a filmmaker, editor, and festival programmer. She is currently a programmer for the Points North Institute and the Camden International Film Festival, and formerly worked with the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the RIDM festival in Montreal, and Philip Groening Filmproduktion in Berlin.

 

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Related Products

Electronic Press Kit | Images, trailers, synopsis: 1999

Associated Links

Parabola Films
Beauvoir Films
Visions du Réel International Film Festival
Radio-Canada Acadie
CALQ
SODEC
Telefilm Canada
Radio Radio
Hay Babies

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  • Madeleine Blanchard
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    Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of distinctive, engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 6,500 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 11 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.