Threads

Irene lives with her pragmatic husband Chuck in their North American bubble of middle-class affluence until their bubble is burst by the painful loss of a child. Irene is inconsolable. But then she rediscovers wool and she becomes obsessed. She knits and hoards hundreds of exquisite little sweaters. This triggers a series of bizarre local events, the ripples of which wash up onto the faraway shores of northern Chile, where one of the sweaters is re-purposed.

Irene's story is tied to that of Gavin, a young man who eventually discovers he has a natural talent for retail fashion. When he sees potential at both ends of the fast fashion food chain, he establishes a used clothing charity. His charity receives a donation of hundreds of beautiful little sweaters (Irene's, of course), and one of them is inadvertently dropped into a shipment bound for Chile. Here, the little sweater is stolen by Columba, a poverty-stricken single mother who has also lost a child. Enchanted and comforted by the little sweater, Columba converts it into an important icon.

THREADS is sprinkled with humor and a touch of magic realism. It weaves the stories of two women in distinct cultures who are linked in their search for solace, with that of a young businessman who succeeds unscathed, in his own blissful ignorance. The story dips us into a quiet Canadian town before shipping us off in a container of discarded clothes and landing us at the driest desert on earth to witness their smoldering demise. The underlying theme of hyper-consumerism and its consequential environmental damage exposes this global reality and its local impacts.