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May Flowers captures one month in the life of Toronto during pandemic times, just as the city is about to emerge from one of the longest emergency lockdowns in the world.

Filmed in May 2021, amidst Covid’s third and deadliest wave, May Flowers unfolds through a moving collection of encounters with a cross-section of the city’s residents. Out of the telling of their stories, and strategies for coping, what emerges is a portrait of a city at a turning point—a city, like so many others, riven with uncertainty about the future and a fraying trust in institutions and each other.

By turns funny and sad, peculiar and melancholy, May Flowers also reflects on the strangeness of how we experienced time and memory during the pandemic—a period not even that long ago and already it can seem like deep time. Will the most memorable period in most of our lives somehow elude our remembering?

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May Flowers
Directed, written, and produced by Chris Frey & Patrick Pittman
106 mins / 2024 / Canada

Camera and editing: Chris Frey
Sound recording and mixing: Patrick Pittman
Narration: Naomi Skwarna
Music: Bram Gielen
Colour: Zach Cox
Graphic art: Michèle Champagne