CLEAR YEARS

Info

Documentary, Belgium 2015
Runtime: 75 min.
Director: Frédéric Guillaume
Production: Images d’à côté

Frédéric Guillaume is constantly filming. He’s got no choice, he explains, because it’s his way of getting a grip on life. So when the love of his life Claire gets pregnant, he of course documents it – exploring his own ideas about fatherhood along the way. His camera travels with him to Peru, where he undergoes an ayahuasca purification ritual to prepare for his new life as a dad. The camera is there again in the delivery room. Frédéric tells his story as if he’s writing in his diary. His sharp and candid observations are often poetic and amusingly self-mocking. Touching animations introduce each new chapter, highlighting every new phase in his relationship with Claire. Frédéric keeps on filming even when things get painfully difficult – especially when the tears flow after Claire says she has doubts about their relationship and wants to leave him. He explains at one point that he films so that he has “something to hold onto in troubled times.” Shot over the course of a decade, Clear Years (Les années claires) is an intimate and frank account of a man watching through his camera lens as his family falls apart.

FESTIVALS:
2015: IDFA
2016: DocPoint Helsinki, Docudays UA, Cleveland FF, It’s All True, Voci Del Inchiesta, IHRFF Albania, Beijing IDOC