Impetus

Impetus. n. latin. Force of movement, impulse. As she is turned down by love, a filmmaker reflects on the origin of movement. In the process, her ongoing film shoot takes unexpected turns. To break free from inertia, the artist grabs her camera with a sudden urge to shoot a fiction inspired by her life. She hires an actor as main character. To escape his sufferings, her hero abandons his Montreal life to take care of a lizard in New York City. The filmmaker is forced to revise her screenplay as the actor leaves the production. An unexpected replacement appears, a muse, that will change the tone of the movie. With humour, Impetus depicts an emotional black hole. An urban tale where characters appear along the way in an unpredictable manner to help an individual reconnect with humanity. Incorporating documentary filmmaking, this captivating indie feature takes us on a poetic journey. A search for the movement that lies beneath inertia. Art in real life. Music as a cure. A craving for unbounded cinema.

Impetus is the driving force of the film by documentary filmmaker Jennifer Alleyn, who tries to overcome what stands in the way of making her first feature film in New York: the loss of her beloved, a crisis of identity, the leading actor who disappears, and a new muse who changes everything. Between reality and fiction, the director takes us into her varied and changing interior world – dense, delicate, and in search of the key to transition between life and art.

Maria Cera

About the Director

Jennifer Alleyn is an Award winning Swiss-Canadian filmmaker. She toured the world with her camera alone for the CBC program The Race around the world. She co-directed Cosmos, (CIAE Award, Cannes Film Festival and Canada’s selection for the Oscars 1997). Her short Svanok won Best Short Fiction Award at New York IFF. In 2008, her documentary My Father’s Studio, won Best Canadian work at the 26th Festival of films on Art (FIFA) as well as a Gemeaux Prize and Jutra Prize for Best Documentary. Ten Times Dix about painter Otto Dix, received the ARTV Springboard to the World Award at FIFA. Her work addresses the role of art in society, and her recent projects explore grief and inner exile. Jennifer is also photographer. She wrote, directed and shot Impetus, her first hybrid feature was released in 2018, a cinematic exploration which blurs the frontiers of cinema-vérité and fiction..