While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts

Each of the film’s two screenings will play in two parts over successive days. In the first screening, Chapters 1–4 will play September 7 and Chapters 5–7 will play September 8. The second screening will follow the same format and take place on September 11 and 12. Please note that all four presentations of the film require separate tickets for entry. Total price for one screening is equal to one Regular ticket.

One of Canada’s most visionary non-fiction filmmakers, Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD, TIFF ’02) has been roaming the world in search of wonderment and transcendence for over four decades. Filmed over three years — a period which included the death of both his parents, a pandemic, and an eerily mysterious illness — Mettler’s latest work is his magnum opus, a sprawling yet arrestingly intimate intercontinental epic that embraces coincidence and elevates the film diary to new heights of innovation.

When While the Green Grass Grows begins, Mettler's charismatic mother — who featured poignantly in the final scene of his 2012 film, The End of Time — has recently passed. Her absence seems to catalyze new queries regarding Mettler’s parents’ story of immigrating from post-war Switzerland to Canada, and to track chance-driven, life-altering journeys generally.

From the Canary Islands to Killarney Provincial Park, from forking caverns to a quarantine hotel, from New Mexico to Cuba, this peripatetic diary finds Mettler exploring his familial past while remaining rigorously present, connecting with his newly widowed father and meeting fellow filmmakers with whom he collaborates on formally adventurous flights of cinematic expression.

A durational work of seven hours, While the Green Grass Grows nevertheless quickly draws you into its groove. Following tributaries both literal and figurative, it wends its way through life’s hardships and bliss. As you watch it, you can never tell where it might take you next: the beauty of Mettler’s approach lies in his heightened attention to whatever comes, turning “going with the flow” into a generative state where artistry and spirituality intermingle and beguile.

JASON ANDERSON