Calgary-born singer-songwriter Cassidy Waring embarks on a profound journey back to her hometown to confront the invisible wounds of her past in a powerful new documentary. Hearse Chasing, directed by Teresa Alfeld, receives its Alberta premiere on Saturday as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival's CUFF.Docs program.
The Search for Answers
Several years ago, while living in East Vancouver, Waring began collecting home movies and photographs from her early childhood in Calgary's southeast. This personal archaeological dig was part of her attempt to understand the roots of her complex post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. She reached out to family members and even a former roommate, who discovered forgotten home movies in a closet.
"I was watching them from a different lens," Waring told Postmedia. "There was that question: Were we really as happy as it seems and as I remember? That was one of my big questions when doing the film and talking to other people who were there but were adults at the time."
The Contrast Between Image and Reality
The recovered footage presents a startling contrast - it shows what appears to be a perfect, happy family living in suburban Alberta. Two children, a dog, and all the appearances of a supportive, tight-knit group fill the frames. However, this documented happiness represents only a brief period in the Waring family history.
Director Teresa Alfeld notes the significance of this visual record. "Things change profoundly when Cassidy turned about 12 years old, and that's when the media drops off, to no one's surprise," Alfeld explains. "Now there are no home movies. Now there are few photographs. So to have her own documentation of her life that so concretely reinforced her experience in the absence of anything after she turned 12 fascinated me as a filmmaker."
Confronting Hard Truths
The documentary captures Waring and her younger brother Cooper's emotional return to Calgary to face their troubled past. Shot in cinema-verite style, the film documents raw conversations between the siblings and family members as they recount their parents' simultaneous descent into alcoholism and domestic violence.
The film's title comes from a song on Waring's 2025 album If I Had Only Been Better. A crucial element framing the documentary is a letter written by a social worker to Cooper at the time of their mother's death. Waring was 17 when her mother died after five years of alcoholism, marking the culmination of what she calls the "harder years" for her and her brother.
Hearse Chasing serves as a poignant reminder of the long-term impact that addiction and family trauma can have, even when surface appearances suggest otherwise. The documentary validates Waring's experiences while exploring the complex nature of memory and the invisible scars that childhood trauma can leave behind.
