By Matthew Liebenberg
Southwest Boostert
The internationally acclaimed documentary film Between the Mountain and the Sky is heading to Swift Current for a special, single-night theatrical screening at the Cinema Twin.
It is directed by former Swift Current resident Jeremy Power Regimbal and will be on the local screen at 7 p.m. on Sept. 28. Similar screenings will also take place on the same evening in cities across Canada.
The documentary has captivated audiences across the globe. It has earned acclaim and awards from screenings at more than 40 international film festivals, resulting in over 30 audience and jury awards. The upcoming presentation in Swift Current will mark the documentary’s theatrical debut in Canada on the same night.
He feels excited about the screening of the film in the city where he spent his youth and it represents a deeply meaningful milestone in a 12-year creative journey.
“I did so much to make this film happen and it has been magic, but in the back of my head I’m like it still has never played in a festival or theatre in Canada,” he said. “The entire crew is from all across Canada. So, it’s just really cool to have it come back to where everything started and where I still have so many amazing friends and family members. It’s just really special.”
He was born in northern Saskatchewan and spent his early childhood in the Turtle Lake area until the family relocated to the southwest part of the province, where he attended Success School, St. Joseph Middle School and graduated from Swift Current Comprehensive High School.
He did not initially envision a career in cinematic arts, but his passion for visual storytelling began in Swift Current. While he engaged in local sports, skateboarding and snowboarding with friends, he often captured video footage and photographs of their activities.
“I was doing all sorts of different sports, but I wasn’t great at it,” he recalled. “I had friends who were really good at it and I would just be the person that films and takes videos and pictures, and I kind of learned through that.”
His enthusiasm for media creation was encouraged by his older siblings, who pursued careers in the media field. His sister became a photojournalist and photographer, and his brother attended film school.
“My brother convinced me to spend all the money I had saved to go traveling to Australia on a camera and a computer, and that’s just what started it all,” he said. “I worked with my brother and sister for a few years. We moved to Vancouver and then I ended up making a feature film and starting a magazine.”
He later relocated to Los Angeles and developed a successful career directing commercial advertisements and music videos.
However, a life-changing encounter about 12 years ago redirected his entire career and personal life when he met Maggie Doyne and relocated to Nepal to begin documenting her humanitarian efforts.
She co-founded the non-profit organization BlinkNow Foundation in 2007 at the age of 19 with Tope Malla from Nepal. Their efforts resulted in the creation of a thriving community of children, women and families in the Surkhet valley with the development of a school, children’s home, women’s centre and a home for at-risk girls. The film follows Doyne and Malla through nearly 20 years of work in the valley.
“Their accomplishments and their story are just incredible,” Regimbal said. “That alone would have made a beautiful film, but the angle that I took was that when I met Maggie there was a tragedy at the [children’s] home and people were questioning whether they could keep moving forward. We started to fall in love and that is part of the film. It’s all about finding love in the darkest of times, and I think it just really resonates with people.”
The raw authenticity of the film breaks some typical rules of documentary filmmaking that follow a formal structure with interview setups. He incorporated about 10 years of film footage from the period before he began filming and his intention was to create a continuous narrative that immerses viewers into the daily life, chaos and beauty of the community in the valley.
“In the typical old school world of documentary, I definitely broke all the rules,” he said. “I probably put more intimate and really raw, hard things in, because I want people to know that this was the real truth. I think that really resonates with people, because we always are seeing the glossy social media versions of people’s lives.”
The creation of the 92-minute film became a decade-long endeavor due to the time it took to film and edit as well as a shoestring budget, but he feels it allowed the film to mature organically.
The documentary’s world premiere took place at the 2024 Mountainfilm Festival in Colorado, where it received the audience choice and student choice awards. The response since then to a self-funded independent documentary has been heartwarming.
“It’s been this beautiful community-building exercise all around the world and just seeing how many people want this type of story in their life has just been really reassuring,” he said. “It filled me with hope as a filmmaker to see people share this and just see all the change it’s done around the world.”
The screening of Between the Mountain and the Sky in theatres across Canada on Sept. 28 is arranged through a crowdsourcing model, which requires that a minimum number of tickets must be reserved for each theatre by a set deadline to enable the film to be shown. There has been an overwhelming response in Swift Current and on the deadline date of Sept. 18 all available tickets were almost sold out.
