A gigantic fire reaches above a forest canopy, filling the night sky with angry red light. The opening image of Can I Get A Witness? has become distressingly familiar thanks to both the real-life news coverage of wildfires and the growing number of movies and shows warning us of further calamity.
Yet unlike most fictional works about the climate emergency, this Canadian film doesn’t dwell on emblems of collapse. Writer and director Ann Marie Fleming evidently realizes how images of doom and disaster have dulled people’s sensitivities. Instead, the Vancouver filmmaker finds a gentler way to envision where we might be heading.
In what Fleming calls her “fable,” the world of the future has had a chance to learn from that cascade of catastrophe. Cars, for instance, are almost nowhere to be seen; bicycles have become the principal mode of transportation in tree-filled communities. Carefully tended gardens provide sustenance, their performance further enhanced by composting and rainwater collection systems. The use of electricity now being a rare privilege, homes are quiet and screen devices are relegated to museums.
There are hints of the hardships suffered before society attained this bucolic state — the wars fought over diminishing resources, and how AI turned against its makers, causing people to mistrust and reject technology. But all in all, things seem to have turned out pretty well.
Of course, this sort of fortune comes with a catch: to keep carbon emissions low and maintain ecological harmony, humans have agreed that everyone must die at age 50. Just as her mother, Ellie (Sandra Oh), did when she was younger, teenage Kiah (Keira Jang) becomes a “documenter” of these planned deaths. Together with her more seasoned partner, Daniel (Joel Ouellette), she helps facilitate end-of-life rituals for citizens, recording the ceremonies in her sketchbook. When not busy in her garden, Ellie prepares for her own impending death.
Though everyone understands how this self-administered sacrifice makes society feasible, attitudes toward it vary greatly. Some of Kiah’s clients accept the task gracefully, like the loving couple who share their final moments together before using the supplied end-of-life device, a wooden box that releases a cloud of poisonous gas. Others are not nearly so calm, responding with hostility, anxiety and other feelings that make things complicated for the young documenters.
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Hard questions arise for viewers, too, like whether each of us deserves as much life as we can get no matter the cost, and how we weigh our needs and desires against those of others.
At the heart of Fleming’s tale — deftly augmented with animation and enriched by Jang and Oh’s moving performances — is the hardest question of all, which is how we choose to accept (or not) the fact of mortality. Having barely skirted its own extinction, the society imagined by Fleming opts for a pragmatic approach to death, formalizing and demystifying it to serve the greater good. But as Kiah sees, that doesn’t make it any easier to lose someone.
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All Kiah can do is face these goodbyes with an attitude of softness. So too does Fleming, imbuing her eco-fable with a profound sense of empathy that’s ultimately more impactful than any image of fiery destruction.
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Jason Anderson is a writer and film programmer in Toronto.
This article first appeared in Broadview’s April/May 2025 issue with the title “For the Greater Good.”
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