Quand la neige tombera

Four solitary characters are involved in a rather sordid incident: a funeral urn containing a father’s ashes, left on the sidewalk for a moment by the family, disappears. The thief, who thought he was stealing a valuable vase, gets rid of it by tossing it into a clothing donation bin. A maintenance worker at the collection company, tasked with disposing of it, believes he is doing the right thing by scattering the ashes from the top of his building, to offer the deceased “a dignified end.” The distraught family searches for the urn and puts up posters. The thief and the maintenance worker eventually each return “fake” ashes, which are mixed together and then scattered, as planned, across a vast snow-covered field—a horizon of endless possibilities, renewal, and continuity. This unexpected journey brings family conflicts, attachments, silent pain, and the atavism that shapes us to the surface. These tiny lives are tossed about by small daily setbacks, always on the run without really knowing where or why. “Are we anything more than ashes?” one of them wonders—but they are now determined to stand tall and take the risk of existing.