‘I work hard. I work very hard’: a female voice describes herself using language that seems to conform to societal expectations of what a modern person – and a modern woman especially – ought to be. As the narration unfolds without context, her words use stock phrases you might read on a resume or hear aloud as self-affirmations. But the shakiness of her voice accompanied by the wry animated sequences that unfold alongside – a man scaling a house of cards; a porcupine surrounded by balloons – expose the sentiments as hollow and at odds with the narrator’s true experience of life. Based on graphic novels exploring anxiety by the Canadian artist Catherine Lepage, The Great Malaise finds poignance, dark humour and perhaps a good deal of catharsis in mining the gaps between who we think we should be be and who we actually are.
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Love and friendship
What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?
13 minutes
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Life stages
Grief, healing and laughter coexist at a unique retreat for widows and widowers
15 minutes
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Consciousness and altered states
What do screens depicting serene natural scenes mean to those living in lock-up?
12 minutes
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Family life
A mother and child bond in an unusual prison visitation space in this poignant portrait
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Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Technology and the self
A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory
7 minutes
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Family life
The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal
5 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes