"Viewers keen on putting their own culinary struggles in context will not want to miss this snapshot of what it’s like to mine for resources as if one’s life depended on it." - Indiewire
SENIORS ONLY SCREENING!
Filmmaker, Suzanne Crocker, living 300 km from the Arctic Circle, decides to put food security to the test in the far North by removing absolutely all grocery store food from her house.
Winner—Rogers Audience Award, Hot Docs Film Festival
When filmmaker Suzanne Crocker (director of 2015 Hot Docs audience favourite All the Time in the World) suggests that her family spend a year eating only locally sourced food, her husband and three teenagers are skeptical. What complicates this experiment is that the family lives in a remote Yukon town,less than 300 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle—not exactly an easy place to access fresh-grown food all year round. First We Eat follows Suzanne and her family as they hunt, forage, fish, grow and raise their own food, struggling along the way to create a meal plan with variety and flavour. In perhaps the most bizarre effort to inject some seasoning into her cooking, Suzanne even dries human blood to use as salt. Filmed primarily by the director herself, this challenging look at food security and sustainability is also an intimate study of a family in the midst of a tough but rewarding experiment.
"This is an extremely well-crafted documentary. It’s gorgeously shot, showing spectacular detail in nature as the seasons turn, and the narrative is packed with tension as we wait to see whether this family will get through the year eating only what’s grown, hunted and gathered hyper-locally." - POV Magazine