Biography

Documentary filmmaker and photographer Marie-France L'Ecuyer is particularly interested in the relationship between humans and their environment. Sensitive to the beauty of vast wilderness areas, her work questions our relationship to the land and explores the inner dimension of adventure. She produced and directed the short films Territoire intérieur (2021) and Uapishka (2023), which were selected for several film festivals, in addition to directing and serving as director of photography for the web documentary series La Virée du Saint-Laurent (2022). Her first feature-length documentary, Marche au pays réel, will be released in 2025.

Filmography

Marche au pays réel | feature film (2024)

Uapishka | short film (2023)

La Virée du Saint-Laurent | web series (2022)

Territoire intérieur | short film (2021)

Director's Note

While North of Ourselves follows two protagonists through the milestones of an unprecedented winter expedition, its primary purpose is to allow the land itself to emerge as the central character, the beating heart of the narrative. We contemplate it at eye level, through the eyes of the two adventurers, across breathtaking distances. Born at the intersection of adventure and essayistic thought, this documentary questions our relationship to the North. It stems from a profound desire to reconnect with Quebec in all its immensity, its silent transformations, its sensitive and complex reality. Quebec is vast, it bears repeating – France is three times its size – and it remains largely unknown. The current borders were drawn about a century ago, but the majority of Quebecers, who live in the south in the St. Lawrence Valley, have little or no connection with the North, except through the natural resources exploited there. This abstract and reductive—even absent—vision testifies to a symbolic erasure, where the North exists more as a geographical concept than as a concrete, living, and inhabited reality. This film does not betray the distance: it allows us to contemplate each stage of this perilous adventure. But it also gives voice to members of Indigenous communities—the Cree of Eeyou Istchee and the Inuit of Nunavik—who offer a different perspective on the world. Thus, in the opening scene, a seal hunter from the community of Ivujivik teaches us the virtues of patience. He invites us to observe the tip of his harpoon for a long time to see beauty emerge. This beauty resides in the inner landscape that lies within the physical territory—what we might call "reality." This is what I tried to express by alternating scenes of action and interviews with other, more contemplative ones, where the North unfolds in all its shades of white. The narrative, imbued with poetry, is written in the first-person plural ("we"), because it includes not only the voices of the protagonists, but also those of all Quebecers who, I sincerely hope, will be moved and touched by this land as I have been. "The land defines the boundaries of who we are," says the narrator at the very end of the film. I deeply believe that the land near us is also ours. We simply need to follow in its footsteps to discover that the North is not so far away and that it has so much to tell us.