It's nice to imagine a world where everyone is celebrated with a documentary like Agatha's Almanac — a tender tribute to the humble life of a 90-year-old living on a farm in Manitoba.
Agatha Bock certainly hasn't lived a very dramatic life. She's never been married and lives in contended calm, devoting much of her time to tending to the garden and repairing things around the house. In her debut feature, Agatha's niece Amalie Atkins chronicles the details of her aunt's life of subsistence — everything from gluing the soles back onto her cheaply-acquired shoes to duct taping the sealing on her windows to keep the water and bugs out.
Agatha's Almanac is uneventful, and it would have been nice to learn a little more about the subject's life, rather than simply her gardening rituals. Moments in which she discusses her romantic history or dead siblings flesh out the portrait of why she lives as she does, rather than how. Agatha makes a passing reference to having an apartment in the city, but any further details about this are omitted.
But Atkins makes up for the slow pace with pure aesthetic beauty. Agatha's Almanac captures its pastoral scenes with gorgeously saturated 16 mm film, full of flared light and eye-popping reds, while the retro-futurist synth soundtrack adds to the vibey timelessness. When Instagram begin introducing fake film filters in the early 2010s, this is the exact look it was trying to capture. One stand-out montage of Agatha picking strawberries plays out almost like a music video.
Agatha's Almanac is the embodiment of cottagecore — a document of quietness and quaintness, aesthetically conveying the romantic beauty of a life of simplicity.
Hot Docs runs April 24 to May 4, 2025. Find details about tickets over at the festival's website.