Shelter (2022)

While many have migrated to new spaces during the pandemic, we've all become intimately familiar with the places we call home over the past two years. It's a basic human need, but we're increasingly transient—and in a virtual world, where is our community? Returning to her rural Ontario hometown Horning's Mills and its philosophical residents, filmmaker Tess Girard delicately ponders the spaces we choose to occupy. Conversations with a youthful gravedigger who provides locals with their final resting place contrast with an eccentric elderly couple who plan to save humanity with a bunker of buried school buses known as Ark Two. Girard seeks solace through these interactions while attempting to reconnect to her roots, questioning where she is meant to be. This deeply personal meditation embraces bucolic landscapes down to the smallest detail and grounds itself in quiet, reflective moments.