Fashioning unique and infinitely enticing diaristic, hybrid documentary-style adventures since the late 1970's, internationally acclaimed Canadian-Swiss filmmaker Peter Mettler can be regarded as cinema's quintessential seeker.
His style is endlessly refreshing and compulsively hypnotizing in its audacity. He insistently probes life's big questions, exploring the nature of love and the core issues inherent in existence itself. His stunning talents as a cinematographer are crucial to the inquiries, especially with his obsessive explorations into the fundamental aspects of the natural world that seem to hold life in its control.
At this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), he premiered his latest film, the seven-hour magnum opus, While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts, which will now move on to the international festival circuit. Those in Toronto who missed this film at the festival have another chance as it screens as part of the TIFF Cinematheque's retrospective, Nothing But Time: The Films of Peter Mettler, which continues until October 26, 2025.
While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts (2025) screens Sunday, October 12, starting at 11:30 AM. If that length sounds daunting to those not already familiar with his captivating techniques, cinephiles need only imagine the joys of complete immersion in a space filled with wonder. It may sound contradictory to say about a film of this length but it's rare that one artist's sensibilities are put into such focus as it is in this expansive work.
This is Mettler's most personal and moving film to date, a crucial statement about resilience to which all can relate. But while he's crafting a personal history, creating a specific focus for his own being, he still interrogates the larger issues of belonging in this life and how things relate or don't seem to relate to each other. He explores seemingly opposing ideas and perspectives but finds a way to connect it all in the natural imagery, namely with his obsessive filming of watery bodies and forested areas.
There's a truth hidden everywhere that Mettler points his camera and he aims to uncover it, just like he's aiming to reveal core realities about the individuals he has encountered and their beliefs on their relationship to the world around them. We're left to come to our own conclusions but if you're anything like me, you'll marvel at how even the most mundane details, the critical aspects of daily living come alive with meaning.
It all comes down to the basic issue: is life really a random series of happenings?