A Climate After Crisis: The Tender Landscape of ‘Can I Get A Witness?’
- Hannah Tang
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Ann Marie Fleming’s film opens with documentary footage of a burning forest. The harrowing scene is not followed by such violence; instead, chased by golden sunlit shots of a planet healing. This is the world of Can I Get A Witness?, complete with quirky doodles that float around the screen. Fleming’s vision is not without a twist, however. As the narrative follows Kiah, a young girl on her first day as an elusive witness, it is gradually revealed that the price of a healthy Earth is a mandatory culling for those over fifty. The film is ironically set to the infamous 1941 track by The Ink Spots, ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’, carried throughout with soft instrumental renditions.
Rife with comedic echoes of religious missionaries, witnesses carry out every stage of the end-of-life ceremonies that form the process of population control. As technology is no longer present, the program relies on artists to document the various stages, which is where Kiah enters. Her tentative curiosity leads her to question the systems that keep the world together – in many ways, she is arguably no different to a person in the present day. Her illustrations dance and shift, as if alive, and provide a window into her inquisitive and earnest nature. This element of animation continues from Fleming’s earlier work, such as the 2016 release Window Horses, rendering this world both more immersive and ever alien. Sandra Oh’s performance as Ellie, Kiah’s mother, is cheerful yet resolved, seeking to brighten Kiah’s life as she prepares to leave it, her own end-of-life ceremony looming ominously.
In contrast to Kiah, her witness partner, Daniel, places his utmost confidence in this system, barely blinking at her first end-of-life ceremony, while Kiah breaks down in tears and vomits. His proximity to death – as an experienced witness and in his own life – allows him a detachment that has become almost commonplace. Despite his knowledge of witnessing, he appears to be barely out of teenage years, like all the witnesses we observe in the film. There is a facet of bittersweet humour in a scene that brings together a circle of witnesses to share their stories, fresh-faced and innocent, resembling a group therapy session. Gone are the concepts of satire and irony; conversations are defined by their simplicity and frankness. Only a few remnants of present-day media have survived in archives: Kiah is comically recommended to watch Zoolander, while reminded seriously that she will have to book in advance, like a remnant of old-timey cinema tickets.
Although death is central to the everyday rituals of a witness, there is a softness in its unfolding – the process is not macabre or bodily, but somehow gentle, its victims slumping to the ground as if falling asleep. This does not, however, remove the weighty grappling with our own existence that hangs uncomfortably around this death mandate. At its centre, the narrative pushes the question of what exactly must be done to keep the earth and its inhabitants alive. The presence of potential darkness is counterbalanced by the luscious shots of greenery that remain in focus even when in the background, swaying gently in the breeze, like it becomes a character in itself within the film. Ellie displays no regret in the hours leading up to her death: what is paramount to her is ensuring Kiah’s comfort, setting up a vintage fridge and marking stacks of wood for the following year. In her last moments, she reminds Kiah of why this mandate must be followed. Aided by a hidden phone from what Kiah sees as another world entirely, Ellie flicks through snapshots from a long-ago era of 2025, before the earth started to burn. Losing people is why she is committed to her sacrifice, and the rest of Earth’s population is too. Tearful and tender, Can I Get a Witness? closes on this connection between mother and daughter, interrogating the limits of what difficult choices must be made to save a dying world.
Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor
