Transitions Film Festival: First We Eat

Now in its 10th year, the Transitions Film Festival showcases short, feature and virtual reality documentaries that focus on the environmental, social and technological innovations and solutions that are tackling the big challenges of our world.

Whether you’re keen to get out and see one of the feature films on the big screen, or don’t want to leave your couch, there are options for you to enjoy. The festival this year will centre around a virtual festival available Australia-wide, complemented by some really cool in-person events in Melbourne. 

Milk Bar was given a sneak peek of some of the featured films, including First We Eat, a Canadian feature-length documentary from Suzanne Crocker. 

The film focuses on Suzanne and her family, who live in Dawson City in the Yukon region of Canada. They live just 300km away from the arctic circle, and Suzanne describes her hometown as ‘the end of the road’. 

Like most of us, Suzanne and her family get their food supplies from their local supermarket, most of which must be hauled in from hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres away. 

Wanting to prove that they could be sustained if the road into their town was blocked off due to extreme weather conditions, Suzanne set her family an almost impossible task – to only eat foods locally produced in their region for a full 12 months. That means nothing from the supermarket, no eating at restaurants and making almost everything from scratch! 

You might be thinking ‘how hard could that be?’ but when you live so far north, where so much cannot be grown and things that can grow have a short growing and harvest season each year, it’s really hard. Not to mention staple items like salt, sugar, tea and coffee are suddenly off the table! 

The film is an honest account of the challenges and triumphs of Suzanne and her family undertaking this challenge. The children were not always on board. Suzanne, who is not too comfortable in the kitchen, finds herself spending all day making ingredients, making meals, and storing food. And everyone craves salt all the time! 

The family come up with creative ways to add sugar and salt into their diet and the local meat available ranges from free-range chickens and pigs to moose and even a lynx! If blood and/or animal slaughter makes you squeamish, be warned there are several uncomfortable moments in the film as the family source and store their proteins.

First We Eat asks us to think about how much we know about where our food comes from, and whether we’d be okay if our big supermarkets were suddenly gone. 

Suzanne shines a light on how important our local farmers and producers are in our communities, how extreme seasons have such an impact on our food supplies and transport and how much of a difference it makes to know where your food comes from.  

Stream First We Eat for the Transitions Film Festival to find out if Suzanne and her family make it through 12 months of eating local in the Yukon, and what they go through to step up to the challenge. 

Transitions Film Festival 2022
Until Sunday 13 March 2022
transitionsfilmfestival.com