Prayer for a Lost Mitten

The sound of a clarinet rises slowly on a black screen.

One minute, two minutes pass. I decide to play along. I "listen" to this black screen, I relax, I let myself slide deeper into my seat. A round glow appears behind a veil of snow, the white blowing snow falls gently. It is the city, it is my city, the night in black and white, I am transported in the middle of a moving dream, so beautiful, sometimes sad, but so comforting.

Art helps us to live.

Some films touch us more than others. These films are rare. And when this happens, we leave the movie theater inhabited by mixed sensations. We live this small moment for ourselves. We would selfishly like to be able to extend it by keeping it to ourselves while walking with our friends to the restaurant or the bar nearby, where inevitably the discussions around the film will intersect with the usual conversations about ordinary life. But we won't really be able to express what we felt. We can try to name it. It's called an encounter with a work of art.

Do you have a memory of a moment in your life when a painting, a music score, the part of a movie, struck you strongly, without you expecting it? Prayer for a Lost Mitten is a one of my favorite film. Why is it so?

In perfect control of his filmmaking, Lesage asks a single question: what have we lost in life that we would like to find again? Trying to really answer this question leads us to dive inside ourselves and say... what is it that matters? Quite a program!

Lesage's film transports us into a warm dream, poignant in its simplicity, revealing the fragility of the human beings when they allow themselves to share and listen. Everything is there. The beauty of the images, the magnificent music and sound design, the intelligence and finesse of the editing.

A must-see film!

I have three lonely mittens, wisely stored in a drawer. I know now why I kept them all these years.

Colette Loumède
Documentary Programmer
Rendez-Vous Québec Cinéma

Presented in collaboration with