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You’ll never see lost property the same way after watching this elegy to loss and yearning in wintry Montreal.
The people who come to the lost-and-found office at the Montreal Metro’s transit centre are seekers. Along with mislaid keys, hats and glasses, they’re often missing things that are more difficult to retrieve: childhood happiness, an old flame, a dead loved one. Over the course of one snowy winter, these Canadians ponder the personal associations that grant objects their true warmth.
Director Jean-François Lesage spent two days observing anxious people at the lost-and-found, before interviewing them and documenting their social lives. Their reflections and interactions pave the way for profound insights into memory, mortality and the human condition. There’s a poetic melancholy to this film’s nocturnal interludes, which Lesage captures in crisp black-and-white, and, in an era of social distancing, Prayer for a Lost Mitten emerges as an ode to shared spaces and city life in all its bustle of missed connections.
“Both simple and profound … Prayer for a Lost Mitten leaves viewers with much to ponder – as well as an incentive to appreciate the things they still have.” – Screen Daily
