Lick Salt

Ryan’s father refuses to see his own mother, which means that Ryan had not seen his grandmother Cecile for fifteen years. What’s more, family quarrels tend to persist. Over three years, the director films his grandmother and their alternately affectionate and irritating relationship. He discovers a complex, humorous and energetic character, a woman who regrets her bygone beauty and cultivates a haughty coquetry. As their conversations progress, he discovers what had kept his father away. Little by little, reality escapes Cecile. Everything seems to conspire against her fierce desire for independence. Her failing memory finally allows fragments of terrible childhood memories to emerge. “When I told my mother I was hungry, she would tell me to lick salt, because that would make me thirsty.” Then, one night, fleeing in the cold and dark and fear: one of the pogroms of the 20th century’s first decade in Poland. Cecile emigrated to Canada in 1920.