INEDIA

[ 2024 . Canada ]

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Synopsis

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CORA (Amy Forsyth) has an ever shifting and expanding list of foods she’s allergic to. When her sister invites her over for dinner and fails to remember her latest ‘forbidden’ food, Cora has a debilitating allergic reaction, breaking out in a rash all over her body. Frustrated by her search for answers among traditional doctors, Cora discovers the existence of a community of people who claim to forgo all physical food, receiving their nourishment only from light.  Founded by a charismatic and ethereal woman, JOANA (Susanne Wuest), Sun Haven offers salvation for others like Cora who suffer from similar afflictions. The body is rejecting food, Joana claims, because it’s in the grip of a spiritual metamorphosis.


Leaving her dog with her sister so she can attend a ‘yoga retreat’, Cora travels to Salt Spring Island, a small island off the coast of BC. Sun Haven is an intentional community speckled by hand-built homes made of cob and wood, adjacent to the ocean and hundred year old orchards, with fields of long grasses and wildflowers. She is warmly welcomed by Joana and the wider community who share with Cora how they came to live on light. Each speaker is deeply earnest, each story compelling, evoking great turmoil leading up to this discovery, followed by salvation in finding their way to Sun Haven. When alone together, Joana examines Cora’s skin. She believes Cora’s rashes are caused by buried, unexpressed emotions. A spiritual and emotional cleansing is Joana’s prescription. Cora is soothed by this, feeling heard and seen for the first time in a long while. Joana shares her own story of how she came to this way of life. After a long period of insomnia and a loss of appetite, Joana was visited by an amorphous LIGHT FIGURE that gave her divine messages. “You are light,” it whispered to her. From then forward, Joana hasn’t taken a single bite of food, deriving her energy from this divine source.


Cora develops a friendship with another young woman at Sun Haven. DECEMBER (Hilda Martin) is 7 months pregnant and eagerly awaits the arrival of the community’s first ‘child of light’. As Cora undertakes the transition to light nourishment, she gets folded into the daily rhythm and work of the community, helping with the construction of a cob playhouse for the children and swimming with the group in the late day.  When a young child vanishes, DAFNE (40s), the mother and a fellow visitor, searches the property desperately. The boy is found in the garden, buried upright by MERRI (5), who ‘planted him like a flower so he will grow’.

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Cast

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AMY FORSYTH
SUSANNE WUEST
HILDA MARTIN
JANE McGREGOR
BAHAREH YARAGHI
ERIC SEBASTIAN

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Crew

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writer & director ELIZABETH CAIRNS
producers TYLER HAGAN, JENNIFER CHIU
cinematographer JEREMY COX
production designer LOUISA BIRKIN
editor LISA PHAM
composer JESSE & JOSH ZUBOT
executive producers DANIEL BEKERMAN, CHRIS YURKOVICH, NEIL MATHESON, JORDAN HART, ELIZABETH CAIRNS, JENNIFER CHIU, TYLER HAGAN, JEREMY COX, MATT DRAKE, DAVID TOMIAK

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Supporters

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Telefilm Canada, Creative BC, The Canadian Film Centre

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Distribution

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Vortex Media

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Festivals & Awards

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World Premiere - VIFF 2024

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