While the Green Grass Grows

A beautiful and enriching experience from one of the most original voices in documentary filmmaking, who has made his most personal film to date without lowering the philosophical altitude.
Peter Mettler has made films about phenomena as diverse as the Northern Lights, other life forms, religious ecstasy and the mystery of time. The visionary film poet has a unique ability to make the most abstract things both understandable and relevant without losing the aura of mystery that attracted his insatiable curiosity in the first place. This time around, he has made his most personal film to date, but that doesn’t mean the philosophical altitude has been lowered – quite the contrary. Here, Mettler has turned his ever-spinning camera on (among others) his own parents in the autumn of their lives. A loving and sincere gesture, carried out with the enormous trust in others and with the radically open mind that has always been at the centre of his life’s work. Mettler is a searching soul, and here it is the basic conditions of existence itself that are the object of his quest.