In this first full-length film from Peter Mettler, we’re struck by the radicality of his gaze and his unending inventiveness with regard to form. By choosing to follow a young heroin addict as he leaves the hospital, the Canadian filmmaker plunges us into his impossible return from exile into a hostile and chaotic urban landscape.

Criss-crossing between solitudes in a desolate Toronto landscape, his film is a whirlwind of emotions and feelings, where our sometimes-indispensable confusion only adds to its poetry and compelling strangeness.

His rhythmic and non-linear approach to the film’s editing, progressing through dissonance, diversion and free association, which, jazz-like, builds a complex and inspiring piece whose daring still awes us nearly 40 years after its release.

Terence Chotard
Filmmaker

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