While the Green Grass Grows

The death of his parents and the stillness of the pandemic become the starting point for Peter Mettler's deeply personal journey in WHILE THE GREEN GRASS GROWS: PARTS 1 & 6. Moving between the Appenzell Alps and Toronto during lockdown, the filmmaker records moments of mourning, observation and unexpected beauty while asking how life continues after profound loss. Rather than following a conventional narrative, the film unfolds through associations, conversations, dreams and fragments of everyday experience. Personal memories meet philosophical reflections, encounters with friends and passages from spiritual writings, creating a cinematic journal that constantly shifts between the intimate and the universal. As the first and sixth chapters of an ongoing seven-part project, the film reflects Mettler's long-standing interest in perception, interconnectedness and the act of looking itself. Nature, time and mortality are approached with curiosity rather than certainty, allowing humour and wonder to exist alongside grief. Winner of the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig and the Grand Jury Prize at Visions du Réel, WHILE THE GREEN GRASS GROWS: PARTS 1 & 6 is less a film about answers than an invitation to remain attentive to life's constant process of change.