Atlantic Film Festival 2010

Journey's End traces the daily routines and events marking the lives of a group of seniors living in a rural retirement home near the sea, a converted hotel that is likely their final destination. The steady and monolithic rolling of the sea seems to echo the seemingly enlarged and calm pace of the lives it accompanies here, as if at the end of life and free of the noisy and rushing details of society, these people now move through the world with a rhythm more in tune with the enormity of mortality.

Gorgeously shooting over five seasons, filmmaker Jean-François Caissy made his film as direct and simple in its approach as possible, without narration or interviews, not even a music track. By allowing the subjects to define the pace themselves, he has created a remarkably comfortable window into their realm. As the men and women of the home go through days that are often very silent, the punctuations of card games, radio shows, hair appointments or phone calls to children mark out the distance they have come and the short journey remaining.