• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

  • Archives
    • Browse Articles
    • Review Index
    • Interview Index
  • Podcast
    • Seventh Row Podcast
    • Abortion on Film
    • Creative Nonfiction Podcast
    • Women at Cannes
    • Sundance 2023
    • The Joachim Trier Audio Commentaries
    • 21st Folio
    • Seventh Row on other podcasts
  • Ebooks
    • Mike Leigh
    • Call Me by Your Name
    • Céline Sciamma
    • Kelly Reichardt
    • Joanna Hogg
    • Andrew Haigh
    • Lynne Ramsay
    • Joachim Trier
    • Subjectives realities (Nonfiction film)
    • Documentary Masters
    • Fiction Directors
  • Shop
  • Join Reel Ruminators

Alex Heeney / May 7, 2021

HotDocs Review: Archipelago is an animated tour of the St. Lawrence

Archipelago is a documentary that mixes archival footage with animation to tell the story of the land along the St. Lawrence river.

Archipelago is available to stream across Canada until May 9. Get tickets to Archipelago here.

Read all of our HotDocs coverage here.

A still from Félix Dufour-Laperrière's documentary, Archipelago, an animated travelogue along the St. Lawrence River.
A still from Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s documentary, Archipelago, an animated travelogue along the St. Lawrence River.

Discover one film you didn’t know you needed:

Not in the zeitgeist. Not pushed by streamers.
But still easy to find — and worth sitting with.
And a guide to help you do just that.

→ Send me the guide

Québécois animator Félix Dufour-Laperrière makes his first foray into documentary filmmaking with Archipelago, which mixes archival footage with animation to tell the story of the land along the St. Lawrence River. Working from a documentary about the St. Lawrence from the 1940s, which itself is an inaccurate depiction of the region at the time, Dufour-Laperrière annotates, paints over, and plays with the footage, and in turn, our sense of the history of the land. 

Our guide through the territory is a woman who represents the river, an animated outline whose body is made up of live action footage of the river. She’s in conversation with a man, talking about the land, its twists and turns and islands, and how it’s changed over time. Throughout the film, there’s a sense of the impermanence of the people who live on the land: a group of dancers from the archival footage are animated into ghost-like figures; a collection of animated people rise up from the river and into the heavens. 

Still from Félix Dufour-Laperrière's documentary, Archipelago, an animated travelogue along the St. Lawrence River. This image features black-and-white animation.
Still from Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s documentary, Archipelago, an animated travelogue along the St. Lawrence River.

Although the film is told mostly from a French settler perspective, the film does acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples who were there first. Innu poet Joséphine Bacon interrupts the narrative with her poem about the land, in Innu-aimun, as a reminder that our entrenched narratives about history tend to ignore the presence of Indigenous Peoples. Throughout, Dufour-Laperrière asks us to question how we tell the story of our land, how much that story is told by the dominant culture, and how that story changes over time as the culture itself changes.

Working with twelve different animators in an improvisatory style — no storyboards or detailed plans were used — allows Dufour-Laperrière to create an always inventive and surprising visual style. Each stop we make along the St. Lawrence unlocks secrets of the land and its people, sometimes with small, personal stories, and sometimes, with stories of a broader community.

Get tickets to Archipelago here.

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films like Archipelago at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals.

Subscribe to the Seventh Row newsletter to stay in the know.

Subscribers to our newsletter get an email every Friday which details great new streaming options in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Click here to subscribe to the Seventh Row newsletter.

Read more about Archipelago in our ebook on creative nonfiction…

Explore the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction

Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction is a tour through contemporary creative nonfiction, aka hybrid or experimental documentaries. Discover films that push the boundaries of the documentary form.

Download a FREE excerpt from the book

Filed Under: Canadian cinema, Documentary, Essays, Film Reviews Tagged With: Animation, Canadian cinema, Documentary, HotDocs

About Alex Heeney

Alex is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seventh Row, based in San Francisco and from Toronto, Canada.

« Older Post
Daughter of a Lost Bird Review: An Indigenous woman reconnects with her birth mother
Newer Post »
HotDocs Review: One of Ours explores identity under colonialism

Footer

Support Seventh Row

  • Film Adventurer Membership
  • Cinephile Membership
  • Ebooks
  • Donate
  • Merchandise
  • Institutional Subscriptions
  • Workshops & Masterclasses
  • Shop

Connect with Us

  • Podcast
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Browse

  • Interview Index by Job Title
  • Interview Index by Last Name
  • Seventh Row Podcast
  • Directors We Love
  • Films We Love

Join our newsletter

  • Join our free newsletter
  • Get the premium newsletter (become a member)

Featured Ebooks on Directors

  • Joachim Trier
  • Joanna Hogg
  • Céline Sciamma
  • Kelly Reichardt
  • Lynne Ramsay
  • Mike Leigh
  • Andrew Haigh

© 2025 · Seventh Row

  • About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Contribute
  • Contact
  • My Account