Agatha’s Almanac (2025) ‘CPH:DOX’ Movie Review: An Enchanting Portrait of a Life Led in Quiet Resistance

In the magical, naturally zesty “Agatha’s Almanac,” Amalie Atkins delivers one of the year’s most indelible portraits. We are made privy to a life operated far and away from the hubbub of urbanity and the compulsions of modernity. It’s not so much of a mantra of isolation as it is to wrest existence away from the inexorable demands, the crushing loop capitalism can set off. Atkins offers an adoring snapshot of her aunt, who may be in her twilight but is as sharp, savvy, open to life and everything around her as ever.

She keeps to her farm, growing all sorts of plants. They are her sustenance. We follow Agatha over a few years, from her late eighties till she celebrates her ninetieth birthday. She is as sturdy, dogged in her staunchly independent habits as ever. She totters around, always busy. Agatha says people ask her if she’s lonely. All she has to say is there’s always so much to do, even now at this age. She never stations herself at some spot for too long, constantly moving, engaging with the splendour of her garden. It’s a wonderful portrait of contentment, bliss in leading life on one’s terms, and finding joy and pleasure in the smallest of acts.

Surrounded by plants and flowers, her spirit itself stays replenished. The garden is her anchorage, lending purpose and vitality to daily life. She guides Amalie and us through the space, tracing suggestions and hacks for best cultivation. How to test which watermelon is ripe? Carrots can be kept fresh if wrapped in newspapers.

As resourceful as she is, Atkins’s gaze infuses wonder into the vigour with which Agatha goes about. There’s humour too in Agatha’s constant reliance on duct tape, using it for quick, cheap fixtures on the fly. We find an absolute rejection of consumerist impulses, an unstinting espousal of all things reused and recycled till they can last. The farm itself looks like it’s frozen in time. It’s what Agatha minutely ensures, doing it all herself and asking for no help.

Hers is a serene routine, committed to observation of how the plants can grow best, burst into fruit and flower. It’s a form of retreat functioning as an act of self-preservation. Agatha’s curiosity and charge in how to honour tradition, the bunch of ancestral seeds passed down to her, remains lit and emphatic. There’s this radiant spirit to her that cannot be dimmed, snuffed out. Whether she has a fall or not, she gets back on her feet and dips back into looking after her beans and berries.

“Agatha’s Almanac” is a work of extraordinary gentleness, luminously devoted to the natural world. Rhythms of everyday living themselves float through it; the grace that can be found in pockets is what limns the film. Agatha has endured many losses, outliving several sisters. She mentions one of their deaths being particularly tough to bear, but she doesn’t wallow in it or let any melancholy hijack her resolve to live. Atkins narrates with affection and warmth. There’s a depth of regard she has for her aunt, more importantly for the personhood and agency she embodies, and it shines through in every frame. The film transmits Agatha’s lightness of being, along with her unbreakable will.

Rhayne Vermette’s camera brings a lusciousness, a vibrance so exquisite and glimmering that it gently soaks us. This is an effortlessly beguiling film, working miraculously as both an elusive, immediate relic. It feels spun with care, love, and passionate attention. In “Agatha’s Almanac,” Amalie Atkins bottles the essence of a charming figure, showing the vessel of her beliefs, doing more for the art of slow living than anything has ever, evoking a way of being, inhabiting the everyday, steered in implicit resistance to a world barrelling forth. Agatha’s story is an invitation to consider all that envelops us and cherish it.

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Agatha’s Almanac (2025) Movie Link: IMDb