Presented only in theatres
What does connecting with nature mean to you ? Lost for Words takes us on a journey through the United Kingdom, describing the landscapes and the communities that inhabit them. The story begins in 2007, with the disappearance of nature-related words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. These lost words, such as “acorn,” “otter,” “bluebell,” and “dandelion,” serve as a guide throughout the film.
The film leads us on an adventure through the seasons, from the most remote corners of the country to museum archives and scientific laboratories. Children, elders, scientists, artists, and activists speak out, sharing their knowledge and emotional connection with nature. Their voices urge us to reflect on our own relationship with the natural world around us.
This film explores the fundamental issues of our shared future : imagining the future of our planet and rethinking it together.
Director’s statement:
Lost for Words was born from a desire to connect, understand and feel nature in a creative way. I wanted to find that childhood wonder that can make engaged action beautiful again. Along this search I realised that science seen through art was fertile ground to rethink the way we inhabit this world. This all started in 2020 when I was in Lockdown in the middle of the Normandy countryside. I was obliged and privileged to slow down; put my feet back on the ground and touch the soil. I was permitted to notice the nature around me with a slower pace. I would walk every day, down the road, across the brook, through the field and into the tiniest wood. It was at this time of reconnection that I stumbled across the internationally acclaimed book : The Lost Words.
A book which had a strong impact on me as it was both intriguing and unimaginable that we may lose the words that qualify the nature I was then experiencing but also inspiring in the way that it celebrated them.These words were blue bell, fox, badger, willow, conker, magpie, raven… Common nature names that had been taken out of the Oxford Junior dictionary and to which the authors Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris had given a second life. It felt like more than just an essay on language and nature, but a symbol of the general lack of care that we are driven to by our contemporary world and structures. This contradiction between grief of disappearance and creative action is what I wanted to bring to the screen — It is there that I found hope. I had long been observing our ways of examining and portraying the planetary crisis we are in. Catastrophe was written into the fiber of each film; warning and debilitating.
The kindness in The Lost Words was what struck me; and its subversive approach is what gave me the desire to make a film that invites us to change our point of view on the crisis we are going through. Not a film about the book, but a film inspired by its creative and hopeful gaze on our relationship to nature. This put me on the path of a long scientific, artistic and philosophical search. The first thing that struck me as I started the preliminary interviews was that each researcher, each scientist, was looking for that new point of view. They were eager to delegate the information they worked to collect to artists and filmmakers so as to observe a different perspective. They wanted this information to be transmitted, understood, maybe even felt. And I was inspired to take this opportunity to show all that needed to be said, in a new light, translating this feeling into film. As we traversed the British landscape, we found that the web of connection kept spreading out in front of our eyes. It was so obvious how diverse the group of people working with and for the planet was and yet how little was broadcast about grass roots movements and the different people behind them.
In the scientific world as well, it was clear that there were many voices waiting to be heard and to tell a different story about our past and our future on this earth. What I knew I wanted to do was to go and search for these connections and show how looking a little closer at one landscape can reveal so much more than you could imagine. If it is true for one small place like Britain, then could it inspire others to see hope in their territories? And what about on a global scale… What could we do if we worked all together ?
- Hannah Papacek Harper
In presence of the director Hannah Papacek Harper on March 22nd in Montreal.
What does connecting with nature mean to you ? Lost for Words takes us on a journey through the United Kingdom, describing the landscapes and the communities that inhabit them. The story begins in 2007, with the disappearance of nature-related words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. These lost words, such as “acorn,” “otter,” “bluebell,” and “dandelion,” serve as a guide throughout the film.
The film leads us on an adventure through the seasons, from the most remote corners of the country to museum archives and scientific laboratories. Children, elders, scientists, artists, and activists speak out, sharing their knowledge and emotional connection with nature. Their voices urge us to reflect on our own relationship with the natural world around us.
This film explores the fundamental issues of our shared future : imagining the future of our planet and rethinking it together.
Director’s statement:
Lost for Words was born from a desire to connect, understand and feel nature in a creative way. I wanted to find that childhood wonder that can make engaged action beautiful again. Along this search I realised that science seen through art was fertile ground to rethink the way we inhabit this world. This all started in 2020 when I was in Lockdown in the middle of the Normandy countryside. I was obliged and privileged to slow down; put my feet back on the ground and touch the soil. I was permitted to notice the nature around me with a slower pace. I would walk every day, down the road, across the brook, through the field and into the tiniest wood. It was at this time of reconnection that I stumbled across the internationally acclaimed book : The Lost Words.
A book which had a strong impact on me as it was both intriguing and unimaginable that we may lose the words that qualify the nature I was then experiencing but also inspiring in the way that it celebrated them.These words were blue bell, fox, badger, willow, conker, magpie, raven… Common nature names that had been taken out of the Oxford Junior dictionary and to which the authors Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris had given a second life. It felt like more than just an essay on language and nature, but a symbol of the general lack of care that we are driven to by our contemporary world and structures. This contradiction between grief of disappearance and creative action is what I wanted to bring to the screen — It is there that I found hope. I had long been observing our ways of examining and portraying the planetary crisis we are in. Catastrophe was written into the fiber of each film; warning and debilitating.
The kindness in The Lost Words was what struck me; and its subversive approach is what gave me the desire to make a film that invites us to change our point of view on the crisis we are going through. Not a film about the book, but a film inspired by its creative and hopeful gaze on our relationship to nature. This put me on the path of a long scientific, artistic and philosophical search. The first thing that struck me as I started the preliminary interviews was that each researcher, each scientist, was looking for that new point of view. They were eager to delegate the information they worked to collect to artists and filmmakers so as to observe a different perspective. They wanted this information to be transmitted, understood, maybe even felt. And I was inspired to take this opportunity to show all that needed to be said, in a new light, translating this feeling into film. As we traversed the British landscape, we found that the web of connection kept spreading out in front of our eyes. It was so obvious how diverse the group of people working with and for the planet was and yet how little was broadcast about grass roots movements and the different people behind them.
In the scientific world as well, it was clear that there were many voices waiting to be heard and to tell a different story about our past and our future on this earth. What I knew I wanted to do was to go and search for these connections and show how looking a little closer at one landscape can reveal so much more than you could imagine. If it is true for one small place like Britain, then could it inspire others to see hope in their territories? And what about on a global scale… What could we do if we worked all together ?
- Hannah Papacek Harper
In presence of the director Hannah Papacek Harper on March 22nd in Montreal.
Other festival:
Festival international du film documentaire de Copenhague, Denmark (2025)
Festival international du film documentaire de Copenhague, Denmark (2025)
| Director | Hannah Papacek Harper |
| Director of Photography | Tess Barthes |
| Editing | Manson Becky |
| Sound mixing | Heather Andrews |
| Music | Leonie Floret |
In Partnership with
Present in these collections
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Hannah Papacek Harper
Hannah Papacek Harper is a US, Australian, French artist and filmmaker. Her rural upbringing in the french countryside gave her a deep understanding of ecology. She has forged creative collaborations around this theme focusing on collective and sensorial approaches to experimental video production. She has been exhibited in France, Czech Republic and Australia and has won awards for her shorts “Vegetative”, “Just Listen to the Storm” and “The Collector and the Tamer of the Wind”. Since 2019 she has collaborated with Rétroviseur Productions on the feature documentary “Lost For Words”. Her immersive project “Geopoetics” was invited to the 2023 Sheffield AR Talent and IDFA Doclab forums. Lost for Words is her feature documentary debut.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team and edited by Le FIFA’s team
Biographical notes provided by the film production team and edited by Le FIFA’s team
The Collector and the Tamer of the Wind (2023)
Just Listen to the Storm (2022)
Vegetative (2021)
Just Listen to the Storm (2022)
Vegetative (2021)
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