Nat Geo's 'Blink' tracks a family finding beauty while facing blindness as they travel the globe
Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent Pelletier pose on top of their camper van in front of adouble rainbow while in Mongolia.
“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.
Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.
The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.
However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.
“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”
The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky
This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.
Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.
“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”
Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.
But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.
Leo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur
As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.
Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.
But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.
“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”
Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.
The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney+ and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.
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Tommy Edison watches movies for a living. He's never actually seen one.
If you're only watching movies, you might be missing out.
Tommy Edison was born blind. That didn't stop him from falling in love with movies.
If your first reaction upon reading that was to wonder how a blind person watches movies, Edison understands. It's a question he's answered a lot in his job as the Blind Film Critic on YouTube.
"I'm always asked how I can enjoy films without being able to see them," he said. "But for me, there's so much more to the experience — there's story, there's dialogue, there's music and sound. It's a lot more than what you watch on the screen."
For blind movie lovers like Edison, knowing that there are actors and action on the big screen is only a small part of experiencing cinema.
Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic. Image via Tommy Edison, used with permission.
"For me, the biggest part of a film is the story," he said. "Movies like 'Goodfellas' or 'Clerks' don't even need the visuals — their storytelling is so strong and the performances are so skilled. As soon as those movies started, I was right in the story."
Even if a film doesn't have amazing performances, it can make up for it with an excellent soundscape. "There was an incredible movie called 'The Grey,' starring Liam Neeson, a few years back," said Edison. "Most of the action took place outside, and the sound editors took advantage of the surround sound in the theater to make it feel like we were right there with them. I could hear the rain all around me — so much that I wanted to wipe it off my head, it felt so real."
At the moment, a lot of big-budget movies revolve around action sequences without dialogue — a challenging situation for blind moviegoers. That's when audio descriptions are helpful.
A woman listens with headphone to a movie playing on her laptop. For blind movie watchers, hearing the action is just as good as seeing it. Image via iStock.
Like closed-captioning for the hearing-impaired, audio commentary helps vision-impaired or blind people follow along with TV and movie action during scenes with limited dialogue.
According to the American Council of the Blind, three American theater chains — AMC, Cinemark, and Regal — offer audio descriptions on all of their screens. Blind or vision-impaired moviegoers can go to the theater and wear a set of headphones that will play a narration track describing the film's key visual elements like costumes, sets, and other moments only sighted people would experience. Best of all, the track only runs during pauses in lines of spoken dialogue, ensuring non-sighted moviegoers don't miss anything.
For Edison, an audio description track changed his understanding of one of the most famous movies of the '90s. "I tried watching 'The Matrix' a few times without audio descriptions. I couldn't make it through more than about 20 or 30 minutes of it," said Edison. "The descriptions changed that; they helped me understand what it was about, and how cool of a film it was."
While Edison is appreciative of technological advancements like audio descriptions, he'd rather they weren't necessary.
If he had his way, Hollywood would simply get better at telling stories, rather than showing them.
This empty green-screen set could become an entire scene in a superhero popcorn flick. For blind moviegoers like Edison, that's a big problem. Image via iStock.
"The one genre that doesn’t really work for me as a blind audience member are the superhero movies," he said, conspiratorially. "'Thor,' 'X-Men,' 'Superman' — it all sort of seems to be eye candy. They have all these incredible performers, and they all know how to act — studios need to give them something to work with! At the very least, they need to talk to each other more during fight scenes, not just grunt and roar."
Movies and TV shows are part of our shared cultural fabric — whether we're watching them for the action on the screen or listening to them for the stories they tell.
While, as Edison said, "there's nobody audio-describing our lives," anyone can appreciate the moviegoing experience of blind people on their own. So next time you settle in for a night on the couch or head to the theater for a break (and some $12 popcorn), maybe try closing your eyes and listening to the film instead. You might end up seeing it in a whole new way.
Tommy Edison was born blind. That didn't stop him from falling in love with movies.
If your first reaction upon reading that was to wonder how a blind person watches movies, Edison understands. It's a question he's answered a lot in his job as the Blind Film Critic on YouTube.
"I'm always asked how I can enjoy films without being able to see them," he said. "But for me, there's so much more to the experience — there's story, there's dialogue, there's music and sound. It's a lot more than what you watch on the screen."
For blind movie lovers like Edison, knowing that there are actors and action on the big screen is only a small part of experiencing cinema.
Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic. Image via Tommy Edison, used with permission.
"For me, the biggest part of a film is the story," he said. "Movies like 'Goodfellas' or 'Clerks' don't even need the visuals — their storytelling is so strong and the performances are so skilled. As soon as those movies started, I was right in the story."
Even if a film doesn't have amazing performances, it can make up for it with an excellent soundscape. "There was an incredible movie called 'The Grey,' starring Liam Neeson, a few years back," said Edison. "Most of the action took place outside, and the sound editors took advantage of the surround sound in the theater to make it feel like we were right there with them. I could hear the rain all around me — so much that I wanted to wipe it off my head, it felt so real."
At the moment, a lot of big-budget movies revolve around action sequences without dialogue — a challenging situation for blind moviegoers. That's when audio descriptions are helpful.
A woman listens with headphone to a movie playing on her laptop. For blind movie watchers, hearing the action is just as good as seeing it. Image via iStock.
Like closed-captioning for the hearing-impaired, audio commentary helps vision-impaired or blind people follow along with TV and movie action during scenes with limited dialogue.
According to the American Council of the Blind, three American theater chains — AMC, Cinemark, and Regal — offer audio descriptions on all of their screens. Blind or vision-impaired moviegoers can go to the theater and wear a set of headphones that will play a narration track describing the film's key visual elements like costumes, sets, and other moments only sighted people would experience. Best of all, the track only runs during pauses in lines of spoken dialogue, ensuring non-sighted moviegoers don't miss anything.
For Edison, an audio description track changed his understanding of one of the most famous movies of the '90s. "I tried watching 'The Matrix' a few times without audio descriptions. I couldn't make it through more than about 20 or 30 minutes of it," said Edison. "The descriptions changed that; they helped me understand what it was about, and how cool of a film it was."
While Edison is appreciative of technological advancements like audio descriptions, he'd rather they weren't necessary.
If he had his way, Hollywood would simply get better at telling stories, rather than showing them.
This empty green-screen set could become an entire scene in a superhero popcorn flick. For blind moviegoers like Edison, that's a big problem. Image via iStock.
"The one genre that doesn’t really work for me as a blind audience member are the superhero movies," he said, conspiratorially. "'Thor,' 'X-Men,' 'Superman' — it all sort of seems to be eye candy. They have all these incredible performers, and they all know how to act — studios need to give them something to work with! At the very least, they need to talk to each other more during fight scenes, not just grunt and roar."
Movies and TV shows are part of our shared cultural fabric — whether we're watching them for the action on the screen or listening to them for the stories they tell.
While, as Edison said, "there's nobody audio-describing our lives," anyone can appreciate the moviegoing experience of blind people on their own. So next time you settle in for a night on the couch or head to the theater for a break (and some $12 popcorn), maybe try closing your eyes and listening to the film instead. You might end up seeing it in a whole new way.