Can I Get A Witness?

Eight years since her last feature, filmmaker, writer, and visual artist Ann Marie Fleming brings her gentle, introspective touch to the timely genre of environmental science fiction.

Joined by past collaborator Sandra Oh — who voiced and co-produced Fleming’s Window Horses (TIFF ’16) — and elements of her trademark animation, Can I Get a Witness? tells the story of a mother and daughter in a near-future world where huge sacrifices are made to maintain life on Earth.

With its resources swallowed by e-waste and overpopulation, the world is experiencing an anthropogenic collapse. To manage, technological advances are shunned. Nobody has electricity and only people with exceptions are permitted cars. Most importantly, there is also a collective agreement that nobody is allowed to live beyond the age of 50.

Oh’s Ellie lives with her teenage daughter Kiah (Keira Jang), who is starting her first day as a Documenter, an important role in this new world order. She uses her artistic gifts — beautifully conjured in animations — to draw the dying ceremonies, since printing and photography have been banned.

Kiah is paired with Daniel (Joel Oulette), the young man who performs the contractual elements of each person’s end-of-life ceremony. He matter-of-factly provides the packages a person can choose, sets them up when the time comes, and performs the burials. But his new coworker is having a hard time handling the emotional impacts of the job.

With Fleming’s deft touch, Can I Get a Witness? is an inspired look at what memories — and catastrophic climate change — might look like.

KELLY BOUTSALIS