The sun always shines in Chagrin Valley, a pastel assisted living home for people with dementia in the USA. Within its carefully staged 1950s decor, a fragile community drifts through slow days marked by confusion, fleeting tensions and long awaited family visits. Florence and her companions dream of an elusive elsewhere, suspended between memory and illusion.

Behind the scenes, caregivers who are both tender and exhausted sustain the rhythms of this sanitised social theatre. Between shifts, they quietly share their own hopes for a different future, not so distant from that of the residents they care for.

Chagrin Valley is a tender and lucid inquiry into our relationship with old age, care, and the quiet persistence of hope: a glimpse into the substance of our collective dreams.

Dir. Nathalie Berger | 62min | 2023 | Switzerland

"Examining our relationship with old age, illness and the universal fear of dying, and gently probing into the matter of our individual and collective dreams, she interrogates the false promises of our contemporary society." - Visions du Reel, Winner, Jury Prize National Competition

"Unlike the residents, the care staff largely comprises Black women. Berger studies this contrast without didacticism, emphasising instead the subtle chasm of racial and socioeconomic hierarchy. While the architecture of the facility aims to reproduce the outside world, the film uncovers the invisible labour that underpins the running of the institution.....a microcosm of American life" - Guardian

"exposes the collective fictions that make up America's facade, as well as our neglect of those who need care the most—whether they have dementia or not." - Winner, Swiss Film Award, Best Graduation Film

"A sensitive and humorous portrait of human decay" - Film Bulletin

"Correctly motivated social realism is offset by the nursing home’s unexpectedly surreal qualities, especially the nighttime “streets” that contribute a layer of the uncanny. It’s the type of aesthetic disorientation an especially attentive documentarian can locate in the unlikeliest of settings" - Filmmaker Magazine

"This delicately observed film shows the tragedy of memory loss as well as highly amusing moments of everyday life. While the residents live in the past, the care staff hold on to their dreams of a better future. Stephanie Vierkorn" - DOK Fest Munchen