Samara Grace Chadwick travels back to Moncton’s École Mathieu-Martin to revisit a traumatic past. International premiere for powerful NFB-co-produced feature doc 1999 at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel.

March 15, 2018 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Samara Grace Chadwick’s National Film Board of Canada co-produced feature documentary 1999 (Parabola Films/Beauvoir Films/NFB) will have its international premiere at Switzerland’s prestigious Visions du Réel International Film Festival, April 13 to 21.

In 1999, director Chadwick returns to the city she fled as a teen, when a wave of suicides at École Mathieu-Martin in Moncton, dubbed “Suicide High,” took the lives of multiple students. Impassioned, impressionistic, poetic and deeply intimate, 1999 follows Chadwick as she revisits those traumatic events, joining with peers to bear witness to a time when every instant of their adolescent lives felt overwhelming and when their entire community teetered on the brink—as together they find strength in sharing long-silenced memories.

1999 is produced by Parabola Films (Selin Murat and Sarah Spring) in co-production with Beauvoir Films (Aline Schmid) and the NFB (Kat Baulu from the Quebec and Atlantic Studio and Jac Gautreau from the Canadian Francophonie Studio – Acadie), in collaboration with Radio-Canada Acadie (Marie-Claude Dupont), CALQ, and SODEC, and supported internationally by Eurimages through Telefilm Canada. The film features an original score by Swiss musician Cyril Hahn as well as Acadian musicians Gabriel Malenfant of the group Radio Radio and Vivianne Roy of Hay Babies.

A Canada/Switzerland co-production, the film will be screening in the National Competition at Visions du Réel. 1999 opened in Montreal at Les Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, following a special community screening in Moncton.

Samara Grace Chadwick grew up in Moncton, New Brunswick, and left the city at age 16. She earned a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and has spent more than 15 years working in the field of documentary film throughout Europe and North and South America, primarily as a filmmaker, editor, and festival programmer. She is currently a programmer for the Points North Institute and the Camden International Film Festival, and formerly worked with the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the RIDM festival in Montreal, and Philip Groening Filmproduktion in Berlin.

About the NFB

The NFB is Canada’s public producer of award-winning creative documentaries, auteur animation, interactive stories and participatory experiences. NFB producers are embedded in communities across the country, from St. John’s to Vancouver, working with talented creators on innovative and socially relevant projects. The NFB is a leader in gender equity in film and digital media production, and is working to strengthen Indigenous-led production, guided by the recommendations of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. NFB productions have won over 7,000 awards, including 20 Canadian Screen Awards, 17 Webbys, 12 Oscars and more than 100 Genies. To access NFB works, visit NFB.ca or download its apps for mobile devices

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