A Japanese-Canadian woman grapples with the death of her mother as she brings her family to a remote British Colombian island in Meredith Hama-Brown's Seagrass. This distressed, lonely key art, with its almost letterhead typography and design at the top makes wonderful use of the negative space that shadows cast inside an open cave.
The orifice in the bottom corner, with a lone figure, facing away from the camera, in the diffuse, foggy light evokes the loneliness of both the land and the sea. The grainy distress of the designs further underlines its personal isolation in a big, rocky, world we live.
Might I have wanted to see this film based on a quick synopsis in the TIFF catalogue last year? Perhaps. Had I seen this poster before I was selecting films to watch for the festival would I have carved out a spot for it? Definitely.
Friday One Sheet: SEAGRASS