Synopsis
Tu as crié LET ME GO is an intimate and heartrending film in which filmmaker Anne Claire Poirier undertakes a personal investigation into the tragic death of her daughter Yanne, who was murdered at the age of 26. A former drug addict and sex worker, Yanne had fallen into the margins of society. Through this film, Poirier reaches out to those living with or working alongside people struggling with addiction, prostitution, and AIDS, in the hope of better understanding her daughter’s path — and that of so many other young people in distress. The film questions the deeper meaning of the events that led to this violent death and the painful mourning journey of a mother faced with the unacceptable.
A word from Tënk
A grainy black and white image and the shrill cry of weeping violins carry this documentary — terribly harsh, yet necessary — about addiction and its far-reaching, hard-to-measure repercussions, much like the crushing powerlessness felt by the loved ones of a junkie. An infinite sadness runs through Tu as crié LET ME GO, the sadness of its director Anne Claire Poirier of course, who calls on her considerable filmmaking skills to reflect on the tragic loss of her daughter Yanne, to make peace with that loss, but also to try to understand how it happened, how people like Yanne — addicts like her — live and die because of their affliction, how we might help them, or come to terms with the fact that it may be impossible to do so. And to accept that the answers are not always clear, and may not even exist at all.
Beyond recounting her own path toward acceptance and solace — a story she tells in voiceover, scattered throughout the film over images of places tied to her daughter’s violent death (a snow-covered cemetery, a courthouse, back alleys in Montreal, underprivileged neighborhoods, an Outremont park) or over symbolic images (an iceberg adrift at sea, trees, a spinning acrobat) — Anne Claire Poirier also reaches out to others. People who have lived through the slow downfall of a child. People who have fallen into addiction themselves. People who work on the streets alongside those in need. People who’ve managed to escape that hell, and the adjacent world of prostitution. People working to dismantle the harmful, dehumanizing perceptions of addicts, and to help them, treat their addiction, restore their dignity and humanity so often denied or ignored. The modesty and restraint the filmmaker shows by refusing to display certain images described in her narration — emaciated bodies, abscesses, raw pain — become, in her own words, a denunciation of the silence surrounding addiction, one made all the more powerful by the respect she thereby preserves for those suffering from it. What emerges from this achingly beautiful, sorrowful film, from the pain it gives voice to (both of the addicts and their loved ones), is hope — and light — that comes from learning to let go of what we can’t control, while holding on to the love we feel for those dearest to us.
Claire Valade
Critic and programmer
