The Cinematheque

“One of the most important filmmakers working today. Peter Mettler has created an essential body of work, exploring the intractable ingredients of cinema itself.”

Atom Egoyan

In the cosmology of Canadian cinema, Peter Mettler (b. 1958) is our seeker, ever gravitating toward outsiders in search of ecstatic states, spectacles that defy straightforward documentation, and sacred places that promise metaphysical deliverance. There are precedents for his methodologies—the films of Chris Marker and Werner Herzog come to mind—but Mettler’s gifts as an unobtrusive interviewer and his capacity to discover shared sensibilities between people of vastly diverse cultures and creeds feels singular.

Though a key figure of the Toronto New Wave, Mettler forged a very different path than those of peers such as Atom Egoyan, Bruce McDonald, and Patricia Rozema, nurturing an exploratory breed of filmmaking that, given its rigorously unpredictable modus operandi, is daunting to finance. Mettler’s process persistently invites chance, thrives on a balance of intention and intuition, requires tremendous craft, and opens doors to wonderment. This is especially true of the films showcased in this series: Picture of Light (1994), a nonfiction adventure film in which a small crew travels north in hopes of apprehending the aurora borealis; the epic, Genie-winning Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), in which Mettler goes to the Southwestern US, Switzerland, India, and Toronto’s airport strip to find people attempting to make contact with the sublime; and his most ambitious work, While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts (2025), which chronicles three coincidence-laden years of travel and stillness, loss and discovery, global rupture and personal crisis, and countless encounters with people, places, and phenomena that no one—Mettler included—could have predicted.

While the Green Grass Grows is the work of an artist who has matured in both outlook and approach yet has never lost his uncanny antenna for mystery, rare beauty, and the everyday strange. Running seven hours, but rapidly drawing you into its groove, this episodic film attains its magisterial ambiance by dint of its author’s ability to show up, travel blind, and apply observational discipline to whatever comes, confident that something precious is waiting to reveal itself.

José Teodoro
Series curator

“Few filmmakers are as attuned to the wonders of existence, or to the sensual and perceptual possibilities of cinema.”

Dennis Lim, Film at Lincoln Center

“Peter Mettler is an incomparable talent in Canadian cinema. The innovation and audacity of his work, his dedication to the cinematic art form, and his ability to conjure up images that remain permanently etched in one’s mind, secures his place as one of this country’s most distinguished filmmakers.”

Piers Handling, TIFF