the air we breathe
2023 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Christina Battle
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, provocative, surreal
Part of an expanded experimental documentary thinking through the complexities of air pollution by weaving together Edmonton air-quality research, personal storytelling, and speculative imaginings of how shared air shapes memory and connection.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Battle's refusing the documentary's easiest move—just show us the data, lecture us about pollution—and instead she's braiding research with memory and speculative reverie like she's not sure which one tells the truth anyway; that's the kind of formal insubordination that actually means something.
The essay film tradition—Marker, Farocki, the whole lineage of thought-through-form—finds a precise new voice here, where air quality data becomes a container for intimate reflection on how we share and know the world together; the architecture of speculative documentary is where this film's real rigor lives.
The decision to let personal memory and scientific measurement orbit the same emotional center without resolving them into false clarity is where Battle's restraint becomes everything—a 9-minute film about air that trusts you to breathe with it rather than convince you.
Reviews
Expanded experimental documentary combining Edmonton air-quality research with themes of environmental catastrophe, environmental racism, cultural and political shifts, and conspiracy, alongside personal storytelling and speculative imagining about scent, pollution, shared inhalation, and collective memory.