Made Here Film Festival 2024: The Quietest Year | Review

Filmmaker Karen Akins relocated with her family to the town of Stowe in Vermont, the second most rural state in the United States. Coming from Austin, Texas, like many Americans fleeing urban centers in search of tranquility, the small family expected to find in bucolic and sparsely populated Vermont nothing more or less than a haven of peace and serenity. However, they soon discovered numerous noise nuisances unregulated by the State of Vermont, whether they were domestic, neighborhood-related, transportation-related, or linked to public policies.

As the film astutely shows, contrary to a fatalism that is too easily accepted, sources of noise – defined as a sound nuisance by its intensity, accumulation, and especially the fact that we have no control over it – have multiplied in recent decades as society evolves and acquires ever more powerful machines. A horde of bikers riding their gleaming machines, trucks suddenly waking the neighborhood as they use their engine brake to tame the hilly landscapes of rural Vermont, a constantly growing air traffic… Or even the neighbors’ livestock constantly disturbing your sleep.

The filmmaker herself experienced this last situation notably. During months of neighborhood conflict over an unsolvable situation, Karen Akins began to develop abnormal stress due to this noise nuisance. This became the starting point of her investigation, in which she dives in with infinite curiosity, contagious empathy for her fellow citizens suffering from all types of noise nuisances, notable documentary and scientific rigor, and an inexhaustible will for change. The result of this fascinating and abundant documentary work is The Quietest Year, a feature film whose title refers to the lockdowns and slowdowns associated with the pandemic, which led to a drastic drop in noise, while also unveiling domestic noise nuisances, which also generate anxiety.

Although in this film Karen Akins addresses all kinds of noise nuisances, this gesture legitimizes the frustrations and anxieties they generate, supported by scientific evidence, while questioning their multiple causes that reflect current societal issues: shifting away from fossil fuels (for quieter vehicles), moving away from individualism and libertarian doctrine (for smarter and less harmful domestic cohabitation), or stimulating better collaboration between local stakeholders in defining public policies (to stop imposing unwanted nuisances on local populations in favor of economic interests).

The film also pays tribute to the resilience of local communities. One of the most striking subjects highlighted by the film is the expansion of a military base in Burlington, Vermont, now hosting F35 fighter jets that tear through the sky several minutes a day, plunging hundreds of households into discomfort sometimes generating anxiety. Driven by a local administration eager for new jobs and a military lobby deaf to all objections, the arrival of the F35s in the Vermont landscape has galvanized a community that is using institutional tools to reclaim its rights. The iconic figure of Ben Cohen, the state’s most famous ice cream maker, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, has himself joined the struggle, as shown in one of the film’s most striking scenes.

Among the other points of tension highlighted by the film, we also note the situation of a man whose farm’s serenity was suddenly shattered when new neighbors decided to engage in daily firearm shooting sessions. The situation became unbearable for him and his animals, and faced with the municipality’s refusal to intervene on his behalf in this neighborhood conflict, this man was forced to move.

In summary, The Quietest Year is above all a wake-up call, a human film attentive to the issues of its time. By focusing on a subject that tends to be minimized, the filmmaker manages to highlight a host of current societal issues among the most burning. Skillfully executed and documented, brilliantly edited, alarming but never moralizing, Karen Akins’ film is a successful plea for the regulation of noise nuisances, the harmful effects of which are undeniable on health. A locally resonant film with a much broader impact that has already found an attentive audience at the Made Here Film Festival, held in Burlington, Vermont, from April 10 to 14, 2024, and of which Film Fest Report is proud to be a media partner.