The Groundhog’s Refuge/L’île du Seigneur and its Mystery Tree
2021 · 15m · Canada
Directed by André Desrochers
Genres: documentary, essay film, mystery
Tones: contemplative, mythic, surreal
Two island legends are explored through groundhogs and local lore: Bocket Island, whose past has faded from memory, and Île du Seigneur, where hermit Médéric Guérin lived for a century planting trees in a mysterious wood.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most docs genuflect to their subjects; Desrochers treats local legend like a fever dream, letting groundhogs and mystery trees do the philosophy while everyone else pretends there's a rational story underneath—I respect the refusal to resolve.
This sits elegantly in the essay-film tradition, where landscape becomes text and archival gaps become formal strategy; the meditation on what islands remember (and forget) unfolds with the kind of considered pacing that separates curation from mere documentation.
The decision to let the hermit's century-old tree planting become the film's actual narrative spine—rather than Guérin's biography—transforms what could've been a curiosity piece into something metaphysically grounded in a single, patient choice about where to direct attention.