Details
After 40 years of solitude, a spirited elderly hermit opens his life to young female director as he tackles ill health and a declining memory.
Screen Scotland copy: After 40 years of solitude, a spirited elderly hermit opens his life to young female director as he tackles ill health, a declining memory, and questions whether he can live out his last years in the wilderness he calls home.
A meticulous diarist and avid photographer, Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands, living alone in a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’. He has no electricity or running water. He lives off the land, fishing for his supper, chopping wood, and even brewing his own tipple.
Filmed over 10 years, director Lizzie Mackenzie poetically captures Ken’s profound, spiritual relationship with the wilderness: “If you love the land, it loves you back”. Now in his 70s, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature in this humorous, transcendent and life-affirming feature documentary.
