In The Road to Patagonia, Matty Hannon holds “a mirror to the…

There’s a line in the film where one of the islanders says they work as much as they need, and they don’t get our obses­sion with work­ing all the time

Yeah, they laugh at us, and our West­ern work eth­ic, always rush­ing around. Their favourite expres­sion is: ​“Moile, moile,” which means: ​“Slow­ly, slow­ly.” For them, if you’re rush­ing in the rain­for­est, very often you’ll stand on sharp things, or you might not see the dead­ly snake. You’ll also upset the spir­its of the rain­for­est because you’re not pay­ing atten­tion and keep­ing your soul in a con­tent and bal­anced state.

When you were trav­el­ling down the west coast of the Amer­i­c­as, you met a lot of locals with a deep con­nec­tion to the land and nature.

Yes, we did. I was actu­al­ly born in Eng­land myself, and there’s been this kind of dom­i­nat­ing force that’s come out of Eng­land across the world. But long before that, there were lots of peo­ple who were real­ly con­nect­ed to the land and woven into place, and just as ani­mist or indige­nous, as the exot­ic Indone­sian cul­tures we look at today. 

The sto­ry of you and Heather is cen­tral to the film, was it stress­ful putting your rela­tion­ship out there like that?

It is an odd one and there’s def­i­nite­ly this sense of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, putting some­thing so per­son­al out into the world, and won­der­ing how peo­ple are going to receive it. But we – because Heather was on board and total­ly across every­thing – kept try­ing to come back to what felt real­ly truthful.

The way we met was one of those bizarre things too because it was har­vest-time where she lives in Tofi­no in British Colum­bia, so it was super busy for her. She took one week­end off that whole sum­mer, and just hap­pened to pop over to Van­cou­ver Island and bump into me and now here we are, all liv­ing on the east coast of Aus­tralia, with a cou­ple of kids.

What do you hope peo­ple might take away from watch­ing the film?

I want peo­ple to try and feel into the rela­tion­ship they have with the land or the ocean. It was such a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence for us on this trip, espe­cial­ly the sec­tion where we trav­elled by horse­back. The motor­cy­cle thing was real­ly fun, but it wasn’t until we got on the hors­es that peo­ple start­ed inter­act­ing with us in a dif­fer­ent way. 

There was this reci­procity going on with the hors­es and us and the land and it cul­mi­nat­ed in a real­ly deep expe­ri­ence for us. I want­ed to try and cap­ture that feel­ing, that feel­ing of free­dom and beau­ty and inter­de­pen­dence with the nat­ur­al world. I hope it might spark some­thing in peo­ple so that the next time they’re sit­ting out in the ocean or climb­ing a moun­tain or even just sit­ting under a tree, they can reflect on the expe­ri­ence a bit more.

What’s been your biggest learn­ing from mak­ing the film?

When I look back at the per­son I was, espe­cial­ly when I was work­ing in Mel­bourne, I was real­ly strug­gling and felt trapped, with so many psy­cho­log­i­cal doubts around where I was head­ing in life. But then I took that leap to change my life in a big way and embark on the trip this film is cen­tred on. I look at where I am now, and I think it’s amaz­ing that it happened.

I would say to oth­ers who are think­ing about a big change, it prob­a­bly works out most of the time. It’s our own kind of fears of the unknown that can hold us back.

What projects are you work­ing on next?

I’m about to start work on a new doc­u­men­tary with [out­door cloth­ing brand] Patag­o­nia in Mentawai. Right next to the vil­lage you saw in my film, a big cor­po­ra­tion backed by many bil­lion­aires wants to build a city and spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone. It’s a cul­tur­al­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive area, a nation­al park, and a bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspot but they’re gain­ing momen­tum for the devel­op­ment, which is pret­ty sick­en­ing. So hope­ful­ly we can raise aware­ness and help the fight on that.

The Road to Patag­o­nia is on the Icon Film Chan­nel for one month from May 30th, then at UK cin­e­mas from June 27th.

Sam Had­dad is a free­lance writer who writes the newslet­ter Cli­mate & Board Sports.

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