RIDM 2025: Agatha’s Almanac | Interview with Amalie Atkins

In the warm, welcoming cocoon of the Cinémathèque québécoise—home, as it is every year, to the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM)—we meet Canadian multidisciplinary artist Amalie Atkins. She is in Montreal to accompany the Quebec premiere of Agatha’s Almanac, a film that began its journey at CPH:DOX 2025 before travelling widely across festivals around the world.

The film offers a portrait of Agatha, the filmmaker’s aunt, an authentic and deeply endearing woman. At over ninety years old, Agatha continues to live independently, tending to her house and land with a vigor and practical intelligence that inspire genuine admiration. Woven with anecdotes and gently dispensed advice—on growing carrots, drying beans, or fixing what seems beyond repair—the film unfolds as a luminous, generous object. It celebrates a woman of character who spares no effort and who shares, with both generosity and a touch of firmness, her countless tips and solutions for getting things done. The result is something delightfully playful, alive with warmth and wit.

A reservoir of knowledge

“I knew that she had a lot of knowledge,” Amalie Atkins says with relish. “I hear people connecting with the film because it reminds them of their grandparents or great-grandparents.”

Agatha’s way of life bears the imprint of a generation shaped by economic hardship. “The generation growing up during the Great Depression—I think there’s a common denominator, which is, things weren’t abundant. So you repaired everything, you kept everything, you found a way to use everything.” That mindset makes people like Agatha an inexhaustible source of knowledge, and a powerful source of inspiration. “At many screenings, I encourage people to connect with the elderly people in their lives, whether that’s a grandparent or a neighbour, because there’s definitely so much to learn,” Atkins shares. Through the intergenerational dialogue the film establishes—between herself and her aunt, mediated by the camera—the film becomes a space for listening, exchange, and shared presence.

A life decided

“I approached the film in a way I’ve approached every project, which is to let the project lead where it would like to go. And so with Agatha, everything in her world was there. So it just kept unfolding and unfolding—and the only reason why I finished is because I wanted her to see it while she’s alive. We could have kept going,” the filmmaker confides, clearly captivated by her subject.

Agatha’s vast practical knowledge, honed over decades, is matched by her remarkable drive and determination. There is always work to be done, and she knows exactly how things should be carried out—her straightforwardness often prompting a smile of tender amusement.

“She has such clarity. I don’t see her hesitate. It’s like she knows—she has a very clear idea. She’s very decisive and clear,” Atkins notes. “And she’s not apologetic. And she’s very brave,” she adds, with open admiration. “You do what you can and don’t worry about the rest,” as Agatha herself puts it in the film—a line that perfectly captures her pragmatic, grounded philosophy.

“You can solve everything by going outside”

For Atkins, Agatha was a particularly compelling presence to film in the midst of her daily tasks, thanks to her quiet authority and her precise knowledge of each gesture required, whether hanging laundry or carrying out any number of carefully mastered routines. “It’s just because she’s done these things so many times. It’s like it’s rehearsed. She has it. She’s got her system. […] And I was really interested in how she moved.” The same attention applies to Agatha’s way of narrating her own actions, sharing her tips with unwavering diligence and care. “The cadence of her voice is something that I really love. Sometimes it just sounds like she’s reciting poetry. […] I feel like every word is clear,” Atkins explains.

The singular strength of the film lies in the space Atkins creates for her aunt—a space in which Agatha can truly shine, speaking and moving within her own element. At 92, she continues to tend her garden with unwavering commitment.

“Getting to 92 and being so sharp, sharp-witted, and having everything… I think her health was always really great in the summer because she was outside and moving, and I think that’s a good example to anyone of how humans can heal from difficult times,” Atkins says, paying tribute to her.

She invokes Audrey Hepburn’s words—“You can basically solve everything by going outside”—to describe the serenity that radiates from Agatha’s way of life. “I think if you’re in nature, then you’re not alone. You’re with other living beings. And I think that’s, for her, enough. This is sustaining to her.”

Making art is problem solving

Entering Agatha’s rich and intimate world proved to be the greatest gift the film could offer its director. “That is a gift. It is a huge gift to have had this time with her that I wouldn’t have had if we weren’t doing the film, because it’s an extended time.”

Methodical, resourceful, and endlessly inventive, Agatha’s world unfolds before Atkins’s camera—and the filmmaker sees an unexpected kinship between their practices. “My theory is that making art is problem-solving. You’re solving whatever the problem is—maybe in yourself—but you’re also solving a practical problem. […] I thought, she’s an artist. She’s a performance artist, which she doesn’t seem to acknowledge herself, but I hope that the film mirrors this to her.”

Atkins’s own craft is carried out with equal care. Shooting on 16mm film, she creates richly textured vignettes—vivid, colorful, and deeply attuned to her subject. “I was so interested in putting color in wherever—saturating the scene if possible, or having nice, bright pops of color. Because why not? Film absorbs color in such a beautiful way. And it shows her world in a beautiful way.”

With film, light and shadow can never be fully predicted. Yet this unpredictability produces a glowing envelope around each scene, like a living memory taking shape. The magic of celluloid works its quiet spell, allowing Agatha’s Almanac to emerge as a portrait of great thematic and aesthetic richness, suffused with contagious tenderness.

Embracing surprises

A key joy of the project lay in its openness. “One of the joys of the project is that I didn’t always know what would be presented to me. […] And she didn’t reveal everything to me at once. […] Sometimes I would only find out the day before what was happening in her world. […] There would always be something that would surprise me about her and how she did things.”

Even when caught off guard—such as during a scene where Agatha performs exercises in her living room using an elastic band around her ankles—Atkins embraced the surprise with grace. The filming remains elegant throughout, with close-ups of hands and gestures paying tribute to the care embedded in every movement.

“There’s so many things that could be shot. But she has to also live her life and not be on film every second. But that’s the temptation, right?” Atkins says with a smile.

Another strength of the film lies in its refusal to explain everything. Some of Agatha’s actions remain slightly opaque, even as they are clearly deliberate. “I was interested in this absurdity wherever possible, which is why some things aren’t explained. […] It’s always fun to unpack new parts of Agatha’s world—it’s always ever-giving.”

From this experience, Atkins takes away an essential lesson. “I think to be open. Sometimes when you over-plan… what I learned with shooting with Agatha is to have a loose framework, but also, if something surprising happens, to allow space for those moments.”

Deepening bonds

The shoot also brought aunt and niece closer. To deepen the portrait and complement Agatha’s practical wisdom with more personal elements—her past, her life, the trials she still navigates—Atkins integrated recorded phone conversations into the film. “I think some of the best moments, and maybe the funniest moments, were conversations where I was recording her on the phone, but she didn’t know that I was recording her. […] And she’s a great storyteller. There’s always a story of what’s going on in her life.”

The long duration of the shoot and the trust that grew between them allowed Agatha to give generously—not only to Atkins, but to the entire crew. “Agatha is now friends with all the crew, and she’s having them over for a pierogi dinner soon,” Atkins says with delight. This warmth is no accident. “I’ve always worked with friends and family. Always. If there are strangers, they end up becoming my friends through the process. You kind of build this family within the film.”

Her priority is clear: “I don’t want to deal with tension. I would rather have imperfect lighting and a fluid process than be stuck on a rigid idea of how things should look. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s going to have the right energy.” Ultimately, what they built together was “a collaborative spirit.”

Agatha’s trust was also crucial in post-production. “In the end she even told me to cut the film down when I showed her the two-hour edit. She said, ‘You’ve got to cut this down.’ That made me feel freer. I wasn’t afraid of being disrespectful of her time by cutting scenes.”

Beyond Agatha’s Almanac

Now that the film is complete and travelling from festival to festival, Agatha is quietly amused by her growing visibility. She is proud to appear in the Winnipeg Free Press—the very same newspaper she routinely uses to wrap vegetables or protect surfaces while painting, as Atkins recalls with a laugh.

And this is not the end. “There are multiple films that could be possible with her,” Atkins says. One upcoming project will follow Agatha in a different setting: a German-speaking seniors’ home in Winnipeg. “I would love to shoot with her in her urban life. It’s another life that she has.”

At the same time, Agatha’s Almanac has opened the door to another collaboration, this time with Atkins’s close friend Jennifer, a poet based in Winnipeg. Long conversations during the shoot—often debriefing the day’s joyful chaos—brought them even closer, and the two are now developing a project together.

Keeping the fire

A prolific artist, Atkins is also creating a film project with her two sons, aged 11 and 15. “It’s a different kind of attention when you’re shooting with somebody, and another layer of trust that’s different from motherhood.”

She also speaks openly about the need to better support artist-mothers, for whom access to residencies, funding, and festivals is often not designed with their realities in mind. Her solution is persistence—one hour a day, no matter what. “You have to keep the fire,” she says, repeating advice she received upon graduating from art school. “It can mean going for an hour walk. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s feeding your creative practice. […] When you give your creativity space every single day, then incrementally over time you’ve built something. It’s like working out.”

On these inspiring words, our conversation with Amalie Atkins comes to a close. Agatha’s Almanac clearly comes from a place of admiration, respect, and tenderness—a luminous, generous film that gently reminds us, as its filmmaker invites audiences to do, to offer our elders attention and respect, in exchange for the quiet treasures they may choose to share.

The 28th edition of Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) is running on November 20-30, 2025 in Montreal, Canada.