Agatha’s Almanac — Carbon Arc

Thursday, July 9 6:30 PM Saturday, July 25 6:00 PM Amalie Atkins | Canada | 2025 | 86m Fiercely independent 90-year-old Agatha Bock lives alone on her ancestral farm. Despite health challenges, she defiantly tends to her land, cultivating heirloom seeds passed down through generations. Employing antiquated techniques, Agatha plants and harvests her expansive field of watermelons, beans, flowers, herbs, and vegetables entirely by hand. Without a car, cell phone, running water, or even a functioning landline, Agatha’s meditative processes and daily rituals form a vivid counterpoint to the rapid pace of contemporary life. On TIFF’s Top 10 Canadian Films list for 2025, Agatha’s Almanac is an affectionate portrait of a true iconoclast. Made intentionally with sensory sensitive viewers in mind, Agatha’s Almanac carves out a (mostly) calm space in a chaotic world. Shot by an all-female crew—including director Amalie Atkins (Agatha’s niece) and cinematographer Rhayne Vermette— over six years on 16mm film, the project captures the handmade materiality inherent in both the medium of film and Agatha’s tactile world. Among other things, “Agatha’s Almanac” is a compendium of Bock’s green-thumb wisdom. – Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times Blessedly, it avoids the too-crisp digital sheen of contemporary docs, with the director enlisting cinematographer Rhayne Vermette to capture Agatha on 16mm film, the images so gritty in texture and saturated in colour that they feel unearthed. – Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail Winner: Best Canadian Documentary Feature, Hot Docs 2025