2000 mm
2021 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Georges Hannan
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Residents of Atlantic Canada reflect on daily life as the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes routines and markets. A filmmaker records conversations and quiet moments across a changing region.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A pandemic doc about Atlantic Canada feeling its feelings—exactly the consensus play everyone expects from the NFB right now, and Hannan seems content to let it be exactly that instead of interrogating what it means to film intimacy when the whole world is performing introspection.
Hannan's essayistic approach—layering conversation with quietude, region-specific texture with the universal grammar of disruption—positions this within a lineage of Canadian documentary that trusts accumulated detail over narrative arc, and the formal restraint here (seven minutes, no score, just presence) feels genuinely considered.
The choice to record at 2000mm—maximum telephoto distance—creates an almost voyeuristic separation between filmmaker and subject that paradoxically deepens intimacy; it's a technical constraint that becomes the entire emotional argument, turning distance into tenderness instead of alienation.