At the lost and found counter of the Société de transport de Montréal, people flock in the hope of recovering wallets, toques, purses or Opus cards. However, sometimes what is claimed is not what has actually been lost. Take this elderly lady who informs the attendant about her state of health long after the latter tells her to try her luck the next day to get her glasses back on. The lack here is someone to talk to. Conceived by Jean-François Lesage, the documentary Prayer for a lost mitten, winner of the award for best Canadian documentary at the Hot Docs festival, starts from the notion of lost object to better speak of loss in the broad sense.
Why the STM’s lost and found counter? In this case, it is cinema that inspired cinema, as explained by Jean-François Lesage, to whom we owe the award-winning documentaries. A summer love (2015) and The hidden river (2017).
“I saw a Taiwanese film called Murmur of Youth [Lin Cheng-sheng, 1997], which was largely shot in a movie ticket office. I found it super interesting that a film has such a strong location constraint. It is most certainly because of this film that I once started prowling around the STM’s lost and found counter. However, I quickly gave up on the idea that everything would have turned out there. “
Fact, Prayer for a lost mitten does not confine itself to said counter, far from it. Shot in black and white, the film opens with a nocturnal panorama of splendor, poetry … We think of these landscapes sculpted in glass globes that we shake to make it snow.
“I decided to take on, in the image, a nostalgia that goes well with this idea of losing something that we would like to find again. I have drunk on movies like The happy life of Léopold Z, by Gilles Carle [1965], Genevieve, by Michel Brault [1964], or Urban dawn, by Jeannine Gagné [1995], where there is also a woman who collects orphan gloves. “
Why winter, in particular? “The two most trying months for me are January and February. It seemed logical to me to shoot during this period, since everything is buried – lost, yes – under the snow. “
Urban fresco
With his small team, Jean-François Lesage first spent two days filming at the lost and found counter. There he captured 200 interactions. “People shared a bit of their story each time, because behind the object, there is always a story. At times, people would tell themselves as if they were in therapy. It fascinated me, and that was the real starting point of the project. “
It is indeed by hearing these impromptu testimonies that Jean-François Lesage agreed to broaden the spectrum covered. “I wanted to talk to some of these people about more intangible losses. »A woman evokes a conflict which made her lose her family, a second returns to this heartbreaking but necessary separation… All is not gloomy, on the contrary: there are many smiles, many giggles.
“It was perfect on paper all that, but I did not know if it would work, remembers the director. I invited myself to people’s homes, and at first I conducted almost police interviews about their lost object. It could last three quarters of an hour, it was almost hypnosis… And then, suddenly, I fell into something bigger by asking them what were the other losses they had suffered in their life. There, people opened. “
In the film, portraits take shape alternately, as we revisit everyone. As the level of trust increases, tongues are loosened. In doing so, Jean-François Lesage paints an extremely diverse urban fresco: it is Montreal as we love and know it.
“In each of my films, I try to resist the temptation to go to the most exuberant person, because I sincerely believe that each of us’s words are interesting as long as we focus on them. I watched the initial two hundred interactions, and chose the people who were more engaging: around 30. I also wanted the film to be representative, there to be people from all origins, from all social groups… The quality of the presence was decisive. “
Moving words
After this famous preliminary interview, Jean-François Lesage asked people to organize suppers or aperitifs at home and invite their family and / or loved ones. This, in order to broaden the discussion, but also because winter is a season when it is particularly good to meet up with friends, in the warmth.
“I like the expression ‘creative documentary’, and I realize that from one film to another, I intervene more and more during the shooting, and not only during the editing. For example, during suppers, I had my Ambassador at the table in charge of asking specific questions at the third hour. “
However, in spite of all this planning, the content of the words collected did not cease to surprise, and also to move, the filmmaker. “This process allowed all kinds of confidences to emerge. I spontaneously think of Greg and Lucas, when Greg reveals that he has lost everything, absolutely everything: his lover who passed away when they were both preparing for Greg to go first; their house, their business … I did not expect such a story. And yet, Greg is there, and he wants to share with Lucas, to tell him how important the human connection is in life… ”
We will understand, Prayer for a lost mitten is often poignant. This is a deeply beautiful film, and deeply human, offered by Jean-François Lesage.
The documentary Prayer for a lost mitten takes the poster December 10.