Leo Gambera Stillinger is a writer and filmmaker based in Montreal. His work focuses on the intersections of ecology, therapeutics, and politics in a variety of social practices, looking for the seeds of future ways of life in the rituals of today. His first film, An Urban Wild, was screened at the Festival International de Film Éthnographique de Quebec in 2023. He is currently completing a Master’s in Anthropology at McGill University based on fieldwork amongst long-distance hikers on the Appalachian Trail, and producing a film on the same subject.

About the project

An Urban Wild is a small-scale ethnographic portrait of the Champs des Possibles, a former railway depot in Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood which was abandoned by industry and quickly flourished into an ecosystem of its own. When the Champs was threatened with development, it was protected through the actions of a neighborhood citizens group, Les Amis du Champs des Possibles. Putting the history and politics of the Champs (as recounted by a volunteer member of Les Amis) into resonance with the sensory textures and materialities of the ecology itself, the film asks: what does urban wilderness really mean, and what does it feel like?

Footsteps is a work-in-progress film on the Appalachian Trail. It takes about five million footsteps to walk the length of the trail, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine; shot on-site with a GoPro and iPhone, this ethnographic film immerses the viewer in those footsteps and the unique social world they make possible. Told between campsites, hiker hostels, mountain summits, and the endless miles of green tunnel in between, the film documents the social rituals, mental struggles, and unexpected transformations found along the trail, and asks what wider political meanings this transient utopia might hold.