Agatha’s Almanac

Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award at the 2 025 Hot Docs Festival!

Fiercely independent 90-year-old Agatha Bock lives alone on her ancestral farm in southern Manitoba. Despite health challenges, she defiantly tends to her land, cultivating heirloom seeds passed down through generations. Employing antiquated techniques, Agatha plants and harvests her expansive field of watermelons, beans, flowers, herbs, and vegetables entirely by hand. Without a car, cell phone, running water, or even a functioning landline, Agatha’s meditative processes and daily rituals form a vivid counterpoint to the rapid pace of contemporary life. Shot by an all-female crew, the project captures the handmade materiality inherent in both the medium of film and Agatha’s tactile world. Her century-old farmhouse, with its grey exterior, contrasts with the bursts of vibrant colour and texture inside; unchanged since the 1950s, her home serves as a living archive of a vanishing era, rooted in her esoteric practices that predate modern conveniences.