Synopsis
A filmmaker in the midst of a shoot in New York questions the origin of creative impulse. When her lead actor leaves the production, she must rely on ingenuity to bring the project to completion. Straddling fiction and documentary, New York and Montreal, Impetus is a reflection on creation and renewed momentum. Blending poetic essay and autofiction, it is also a film about a film being built before our very eyes.
A word from Tënk
Real… imaginary… truth… falsehood… Jennifer Alleyn’s film Impetus aligns itself with the great tradition of cinéma vérité, yet it is firmly rooted in 2018, in a reality that no longer carries the same substance as that of the 1960s. Alleyn begins with an idea—an impulse—movement itself, the life force that propels us forward.
The initial synopsis appears simple: a young man from Montreal flees his heartbreak by going to care for a lizard in a New York loft. But then reality intervenes, seeps in, and becomes entangled. What emerges is a film pulsing with life—free and alive—that speaks to resilience, connection, and encounter. A deeply original work of great beauty, capable of setting even the most pessimistic among us back into motion.
Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk Artistic Director
