Car loads of travellers are waiting patiently to catch the Carlingford Ferry which links Northern Ireland, still part of the UK, with the Republic of Ireland. Catholics, protestants, tourists, hen parties and families are about to cross the invisible border between the two nations, found somewhere in the water deep in the Carlingford Lough, marked only by a buoy or two.
This is the starting point for Belgian director Annabel Verbeke’s feature documentary Four Seasons In A Day (warmly received after its world premiere in Hot Docs this week).
The film is part of the “Borderline” collection, a series of six “creative documentaries about unknown but fascinating borders in Europe.” The community Verbeke portrays is coming to terms with the new reality of Brexit. For those in fishing or farming, the invisible but now hardening border is suddenly becoming more important and could threaten their livelihoods. For others, it’s a matter of indifference and frustration.
The director describes the “Waiting for Godot” mood of weary fatalism among those either side of the border. “Indeed, there’s a lot of things on the news. All the time, the children say ‘Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.” She describes the ferry as “a bit like a waiting room for what is going to happen because they don’t really know.” (Post-Covid, she hopes to have screenings of her doc aboard the ferry ship).
“The Northern Irish border is quite a hot topic but I wanted to bring it [to screen] in a different way to the journalistic approach,” Verbeke says of her film, which takes a lyrical and often humorous approach to subject matter treated very earnestly by reporters. “I wanted to hear stories of people who live there.”
The documentary was shot over 17 days last August during a period when Covid restrictions had briefly been loosened. Verbeke deliberately keeps the pandemic in the background. “No, I didn’t want to focus on Covid at all,” she says. “I think everyone was sick of the word!”
To film the passengers driving aboard the ferry, the director and her team requested permission to put microphones in their vehicles. “When people were waiting on the parking lot, I started to introduce myself, to introduce the project,” she remembers. Almost everybody agreed to participate. Audiences are therefore able to eavesdrop on their very intimate and often very funny conversations. “People were super open,” Verbeke says. “I think the Northern Irish people are super open and it was really nice to work with them. Also, I think that they are super spontaneous and have a good sense of humour.”
Among the main protagonists are farmers, undertakers, fishermen and holidaymakers staying in a local caravan park. They come from different sides of the religious divide and often have very different opinions about the state of the world. Even so, they’re remarkably similar in their humour and openness.
“[It’s as] if I have a click with people and they are also able to work with me, there should be trust on both sides,” Verbeke explains what she looks for her in her subjects. She was always completely frank about her intentions.
The director argues that you often learn far more about characters from how they behave than from what they say. Her film is full of comic images of pets in car windows or kids eating ketchup drenched chips.
“I work on my intuition. When something grabs my attention, I just go and shoot it. I like humour and I think humour you can’t find often in documentaries, so I really try to pay attention to that,” she reflects. “Also, humour can trigger something else. It can reveal a truth or reality.”
Details, she adds, “say a lot about people. Sometimes, you only need little details that are very recognisable and universal…someone doing her nails in the car or reading a paper or [walking] the dogs. Especially in Ireland, dogs are super popular. You see them everywhere.”
Verbeke is speaking to Business Doc Europe from Portugal where she is on a brief vacation. “I haven’t had a holiday for a really long time. It brought me some distance from the work I did. Now I feel completely reloaded to go completely online with the Hot Docs programme.”
The director is currently developing various new projects, among them documentary series T(w)o Work (working title) which features young people from an immigrant background in Belgium in their search for work. She is overseeing the series and will be the lead director alongside other young filmmakers from the DOC Nomads Masters programme in documentary. She is also working on a children’s documentary as part of the Ket & Doc programme for kids’ documentaries recently launched by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).
International sales on Four Seasons In A Day are handled by 3BOX MEDIA.
