What made you want to start from your story to make this documentary?
I always knew that I wanted to approach the subject of mourning. I’ve done it often in my books, on the radio, in my columns, it’s a subject that lives in me. On the other hand, I was rather reluctant to use my story to turn it into a documentary. I didn’t want to make a film about me. It was the director Maude Sabbagh who made me understand that I could use my experience to go further in the interviews, to approach less known or more taboo angles. And when I watch the film and I see myself telling a dad who has an incurable disease that, at some point, his child may want him to die, I tell myself that Maude understood how one could put my story at the service of the film.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Rose-Aimée Autumn T. Morin grew up with a father on borrowed time: she was 2 years old when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer. He passed away when she was 16.
Did the fact that you lived through your father’s illness and bereavement during childhood and adolescence give you a free hand?
I find that it allowed me to launch deep discussions quickly. I converse with parents who don’t know what their child is going through and I, as a former child, have no idea what those parents are going through. It is as if we were looking for answers on both sides. I have the impression that it gives rise to a more egalitarian exchange: I am not “vampirizing” their history, I am digging to better understand mine and they can do the same thing. And it’s the fact of having gone through the incurable illness of a parent that allows me to offer that and to access that.
The film is about death, but it talks a lot about life…
Completely ! My goal was to break the loneliness. Dying or witnessing the death of a loved one comes with a lot of loneliness, with isolation. Our friends don’t know how to approach the subject, neither do our loved ones, there is a social malaise. I wanted to open the conversation with a film that shows that talking about death is celebrating life while it’s still there. We see it in a very dark way and it is, but there are also tremendous bursts of light when you tame death.
There is a boy in the film who wants to help other children. What does he want to do?
He founded a peer group called “Les jeunes pisteurs”, which is headed by university researchers. It is a group of children who have experienced the disease themselves or that of a relative. They gather to discuss it, without an adult, to be able to tell each other the real business. They would like to be able to help other children and, through the research report, make it clear what children are going through and perhaps do not dare to tell their parents.
When we started the research, with my co-screenwriter Marie-Anne Grenon, we said to ourselves that there shouldn’t be any children in the film. We said to ourselves that they were young, in a state of vulnerability, and that they might regret having testified when they were older. We wanted to focus on parents and experts. That changed when I met Josée Masson from Deuil Jeunesse. She told me that I had no right to prevent a child from telling his story if he wanted to, that it was a bit of a duty to hear what he wanted to say. We chose to make room for children, and that completely changed the perspective of the film.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RADIO-CANADA
Rose-Aimée Autumn T. Morin in an excerpt from the documentary The bereavement legacy
What consequences do you hope for?
I showed it to a friend who lives with incurable cancer and she said to me: it makes me so good to hear other parents say what I whisper to myself. That a person watches the film and feels seen, heard, understood, less alone, that was my number one goal. I would also like people to realize that there are palliative care resources, psychosocial services. We need an outside perspective to guide us. What we understand in the film is that mourning is different for each person, everyone needs different tools, words, gestures to deal with approaching death. And we don’t have to do it alone.
You also mention a lesson you learned with your father’s illness…
We agree, I would have preferred not to experience this, but it’s also a bit of a gift. The truth is that it teaches us things: the importance of our loved ones, the fact that nothing lasts and that we must take advantage of it. That’s what I say in the film: it taught me that life is worth trying.
Responses have been edited for brevity.
The bereavement legacySaturday, 10:30 p.m., on ICI Télé