Country: Canada
Year: 2025
Duration: 94
During the unveiling of a sculpture in a Manitoban city, a massive explosion lights up the sky, marking the beginning of a day of global darkness. While the entire world waits before their televisions for the sun’s return, life in the Red River Valley carries on as if nothing had happened. Yet death remains an unstoppable force, made all the more apparent with the return of light. Driven by curiosity, a young civil servant embarks on a journey to the home of the sculptor at the center of these events – a passage that moves between realism and myth, the sacred and the everyday, Catholic culture and Métis roots.
Biography
film director
Rhayne Vermette
(Notre Dame de Lourdes, Canada, 1982), while studying architecture at the University of Manitoba, fell into the practices of image making and storytelling. Primarily self taught, Rhayne’s films are opulent collages of fiction, animation, documentary, reenactments and divine interruption. She wrote and directed the short films R Seymore Goes North (2011), Tudor Village: A One Shot Deal (2012), Rob What (2015) and U.F.O. (2016), and had acting roles in the short film Accidence and the television series Edgar. In 2021, she presented her first feature film, Ste. Anne, at the Turin Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
R Seymore Goes North (cm, 2011), Take my word (cm, 2012), J. Werier (cm, 2012), Tudor Village: a One Shot deal (cm, 2012), Tricks Are for Kiddo (cm, 2012), Full of Fire (cm, 2013), Black Rectangle (cm, 2014), Turin (cm, 2015), Extraits d’une Famille (cm, 2015), Rob What (2015), Scene Missing (2015), U.F.O. (2016), Les Châssis de Lourdes (cm, 2016), Domus (cm, 2017), Ste.Anne (2021), Levers (2025).
Declaration
film director
“If there’s one thing I love about this film, it’s that it was born directly from collective action – a leap into the unknown. Produced from a short script of poetry and obscured symbolic events, Leversevolved through the chaos of collaboration, interpretation, and shared creation. This film speaks in a singular regional voice, shaped by the hands that build and belong to Manitoba. Our collaboration embraced a fiercely independent, DIY approach: a small crew, each wearing many hats, working with a modest budget under $500k and a non-hierarchical structure that valued labor through generous wages and time. We leaned into simplicity and innovation, working with three broken Bolex cameras and five lights. We never slated a single take, recording sound and image separately, allowing continuity to unfold as something organic and unbroken. Levers emerged from this chaos – a love letter to filmmaking as an act of craft, community, and spiritual discovery.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, EDITING: Rhayne Vermette. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kristiane Church, Heidi Phillips, Ryan Steel, Rhayne Vermette. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Janelle Tougas. COSTUME DESIGN: Omid Moterassed. MUSIC: Bret Parenteau. SOUND: Cody Blacksmith, Catie Pescitelli. CAST: Will George, Andrina Turenne, Val Vint. PRODUCTION: Rhayne Vermette. COPRODUCTION: Charlene Moore, Oliver King.
CONTACT: Rhayne Vermette vermette.rh@gmail.com
