Dir. Nathalie Berger | 62min | 2023 | Switzerland

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.