In 1985, at two-months old, Dane Morgan Bernhard died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in a small town called Tarkio, Missouri. 25 years later, Torben Bernhard jumped in his car with an 8MM camera and drove from Utah to the Tarkio cemetery his brother was buried in to understand the tragedy that shook his family when he was two-years old. Using an audio interview recorded years earlier with his mother, Bernhard paints a poetic portrait of his family's loss and explores a child's perspective of death and mourning.
With stark black and white images of the crumbling town and cemetery, juxtaposed with the sincere account of a mother to her son, Tarkio Balloon captures the innocent hope of a child amidst the unpredictable harshness of reality.
'Tarkio Balloon' had its world premiere at the 8th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. 'Tarkio Balloon' is the first documentary in "The Lost and Found Series," which includes five documentary films, each under 15 minutes, by a collective of filmmakers exploring what it means to lose something and what we can potentially gain from finding it again.
