A charmingly meditative and gently illuminating portrait of the remarkable – and resolutely independent – 90-year-old Agatha Bock as she goes through daily life within her ancestral 54-acre farm, where she lives alone and still tends the land (despite ill-health and a broken thumb), cultivating heirloom seeds that have been passed down through generations.
Shot by an all-female crew—including director Amalie Atkins (Agatha is her aunt) and cinematographer Rhayne Vermette — over six years on 16mm film, using a wind-up Bolex and an ArriSR2 studio camera, Agatha’s Almamac offers a remarkable insight into this forthright Canadian as she matter-of-factly explains her processes and daily rituals, her razor-sharp mind detailing the plants and fruits, and happily shouting at Amalie and her crew for help (or telling them off) as they become part of that life.
For Agatha – who lives without running water, a car or a fully-functioning landline – it is the ritual of antiquated gardening techniques that define her daily existence, with the film an often dreamy counterbalance to frenetic modern life. Made intentionally with sensory sensitive viewers in mind, the film’s washed out colours and gently evocative score emphasises both the hard work and the intermittent calm that defines Agatha’s life.
Agatha plants and harvests her expansive field of watermelons, beans, flowers, herbs and vegetables entirely by hand. She recalls which trees have blown down and when, and in one charming scene recounts her “beaus,” and how each possibly romantic encounter panned put. She adds: “I’ve never been lonely because always got something to do…still have.”
She is filmed as she shows the various exercises she undertakes within her ancient home, unchanged since the 1950s. There is footage of the various containers – all clearly marked – that she collects, and she goes through old family photographs. In winter she is trying to downsize, so she is going through family slides and images to see which ones she wants to keep.
Agatha resolutely marches around her garden tending to her crops and busily finds jobs around the house, her rituals representing an archive of a vanishing era and her old-fashioned and traditional practices an insight into a way of life now largely forgotten. But she has to go to hospital, talk with doctors and is all too aware that age is taking its toll. But still, as she walks about, she sees things that need to be done and stresses how “it’s a privilege to be alive.”
The director’s aunt is an engagingly strong and forthright character, and the film delights in revealing – and revelling in – her unique life with charm, warmth and real compassion.
Canada, 2025, 86mins
Dir/scr/editor: Amalie Atkins
Production: Minema Cinema
International sales: Lightdox
Cinematography: Rhayne Vermette
Music: Green-House (Olive Ardizoni); Castle If (Jess Forrest; Katarina Gryvul, Andrea-Jane Cornell)
