Édith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier and their four children have many stamps in their passports. Many, many stamps. From Namibia, Zambia, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Turkey, Egypt, Ecuador, Colombia and more.
The family from Montreal punched their ticket to see the world not simply for the thrill of it, but with a very specific motive in mind: after Édith and Sébastien learned three of their four kids would eventually go blind because of retinitis pigmentosa, they wanted to make sure the children could always draw upon an incredible reservoir of visual memories.
The journey of the parents and kids Mia (age 11), Léo (9), Colin (6) and Laurent (4) is documented in the Oscar-contending National Geographic documentary Blink, directed by Edmund Stenson and Oscar winner Daniel Roher (Navalny). It screened as the final film in Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs.
“We wanted to tell an emotionally authentic story and we wanted to make sure this felt like we were in the kids’ universe as much as possible, even if the parents’ experiences were emotionally anchoring the film,” Stenson explained during a Q&A after the screening. “We kept the crew very small … to mitigate logistical challenges, like having to deal with carrying a lot of equipment up a mountain.”
A mountain as in the Himalayas. Lemay said they gave their kids the freedom to determine the itinerary – in effect, their own “bucket list.”
The Lemay-Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sébastien, Colin, Édith, Laurent and Léo in Kuujjuaq, Canada
National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky
“We didn’t put any limits,” Lemay said. “So when Léo said, ‘Oh, let’s go see Pokemon in Japan,’ we ‘d say, ‘Yeah, fine, we’re going to do that…’ They were really into those activities and especially drinking juice on a camel [in the Gobi Desert]. So that’s why we really put an emphasis of finding those activities and making sure each of them got their activity done.”
During production of Blink, Roher was occupied with promotion of Navalny, as well as starting a family with his wife, actor-director Caroline Lindy, which obliged him to leave the filming to his friend and collaborator, Edmund.
“He’s like a brother to me. My dad calls him his third son, and we’ve been working together for almost a decade, it feels like longer than a decade, but almost a decade,” Roher said. “The idea of collaborating on something with Ed in this capacity, from my perspective, was a no-brainer, and I was so lucky. We were all only so lucky that he said yes enthusiastically.”
Roher said as he and his wife raise their boy Gideon, he takes inspiration from how Édith and Sébastien are bringing up their kids.
“There are a lot of tendencies in sort of this modern age of parenting that are leaning towards this thing of helicopter parenting, really making sure that the parents are involved in every single aspect of a life. And I think that what that does is it zaps the child of any sense of resilience or critical thinking,” Roher observed. “And I say this only with admiration, but Édith and Séb are seemingly the opposite of that. At least that’s my impression. They have this really amazing confidence in their children, in their abilities and their intelligence, and they let them explore and learn about the world in a really brilliantly independent way.”
Just as the parents let Mia, Léo, Colin and Laurent be their guides in planning the trip, Stenson in a sense let them propel the filmmaking.
“If we think of children generally, they’re not people who follow the narrative logic of everyday life,” Stenson said. “I think that disruptive quality that children have is one of the great assets we have in this film … these little moments that don’t necessarily filter into the broader emotional journey that we’re telling what Édith and Séb … these once-in-a-lifetime windows as the camera stays low into these worlds that kids make for themselves. And I think we wrestled with finding that balance of, well, here’s the emotional anchor, but here’s just the purely disruptive joy of the children.”
Watch the full conversation in the video above.
Blink premieres on National Geographic on December 16, followed the next day by a debut on Disney+ and Hulu.
For the Love of Docs is a 10-week virtual Deadline event series presented by National Geographic. It began in September and concludes now with Blink.