As parents of four remarkable children Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier were given a terrible medical diagnosis: Three of them had retinitis pigmentosa, a rare, incurable disease that would ultimately make them blind.
“The diagnosis was a shock, and it was really hard to go through,” Lemay said in a Zoom interview. “But a specialist told me that the best thing I could do for my kids is to fill their visual memory. She said, ‘You need to look through books and pictures.’
“So Seb and I just decided, ‘Well, let’s go see them in real life.’ And that was the start of a big, big adventure.”
The Montreal family’s global trek took 18 months, spanned continents, included African wildlife, Egypt’s pyramids, Malaysia, a rainforest, Nepal and the Himalayas.
“Blink” documents their journeys and arrives in theaters nationwide Oct. 4.
“We planned everything. But then the pandemic hit and everything fell apart. So in the end, we left with no plan at all.”
A bare minimum three-member film crew followed them, making the doc possible – only that group was nowhere in sight when the scariest event suddenly struck.
All six got stuck in a cable car which suddenly stopped. Left hanging as hours went by, it became a living nightmare as darkness fell, along with the temperature. They had no blankets, no water. There is no bathroom. One of the kids is in tears, another is vomiting.
“Yes,” Lemay said, “that was probably the worst moment. I knew the only way to keep everybody sane is just to be as calm as possible.
“Also, that adventure happened towards the end of the trip. It would have been a really different experience if it was at the beginning. But after a year of traveling, the kids were used to crazy, uncomfortable situations.
“I mean, we did a 24-hour bus trip in the middle of nowhere! So we had practice and were able to keep everybody sane.
“Honestly, yes,” she added, “it was the worst. But nobody was traumatized by it. Now we see it as a funny adventure to tell people.”
“Blink” director Edmund Stenson was in Toronto when Sebastian called saying, ‘Ed, you wanted some drama? We’re stuck in a cable car.’
“Luckily, the footage that you see inside the car was Edith filming,” he said. “We had 10-12 hours of that, which corresponds to how long the family were there.
“What we had to do from a filmmaking side is scramble and find someone to go and film those incredible, haunting shots outside the hanging cable car.
“That’s a testament to the way documentary works. You have to be ready to spring into action at the first moment.”
