You Can Live Forever

When Jaime is sent to live in a Jehovah’s Witness community, she falls hard for a devout Witness girl and the two embark on an intense affair with consequences that will reshape the rest of their lives.

In 1992, Jaime (Anwen O’Driscoll), 17 years old and growing up in Thunder Bay, loves sci-fi, The Cure, and getting high. And unbeknownst to anyone around her, she’s gay. When her father dies and her mother suffers a breakdown, she’s sent to the Saguenay region to live with her aunt (Liane Balaban) and uncle (Antoine Yared), both members of the town’s tight-knit, devoutly faithful Jehovah’s Witness community. Jaime feels like an outcast. But at a religious service she’s dragged along to, Jaime meets Marike (June Laporte), an exemplary Witness girl and daughter of a prominent community elder. The two instantly strike up a deep friendship, and Jaime finds herself falling hard for Marike. As the two grow closer, Jaime is drawn deeper into the Witness theology, which promises an eternal life in God’s promised kingdom – what they call “the new system of things” – after the world ends. The two disappear into their own little world, and for a moment, are happy. But when the community notices how close they’ve become, it moves swiftly to keep them apart, forcing them each to make a terrible choice between faith and love.