How do you explain to a five-year-old what it feels like to go blind? As Edith Pelletier grapples with the challenge of giving an honest yet meaningful answer to one of her three inquisitive children who will soon lose their sight due to an incurable genetic condition, she gently says, “Imagine having your eyes closed all the time…”
Edith and Sebastien are parents to four kids—Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent—three of whom have been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition where the retina deteriorates over time. The wide-eyed little ones brush off the term as gibberish they can laugh about, but for the parents, their lives have changed in the blink of an eye—quite literally.
The documentary, which begins after the kids’ diagnosis, establishes early on how blindness is a spectrum, with everyone experiencing it differently. From night blindness to tunnel vision to the loss of central vision, blindness leaves room for some light. For these kids, the first loss is their night vision, depriving them of simple joys like stargazing. This becomes the heart of the film, as the Pelletier family channels their pain into sharing endless happiness by filling their kids’ visual memory.
Blink brilliantly places the audience as a fly on the wall, with the creators deftly capturing the family’s emotional rollercoaster as they work to create hundreds of snapshot-worthy memories. At one moment, they are riding camels in Egypt; at another, they are deep in the Amazon rainforest. The family scratches items off their bucket list one by one, travelling to several countries, eating exotic fruits, learning new languages, and hiking in the Himalayas.
