Nuns, rifles, and marijuana: the doc 'Breaking Habits’ wows the Cannes Film Festival

It may seem a script for a Tarantino film, a kind of social satire about Trump's America, but it is a real story brought to the big screen by Robert Ryan. 'Breaking Habits' narrates the story of a group of widely-supported weed-growing "nuns" from Merced (California) who have to live with many dangerous detractors. Their business, based on the production of medical cannabis and CBD-derived products, has grown dramatically during these last years thanks to the press coverage and the regulation of cannabis in the state of California. However, there is this persistent local sheriff that won't believe the story of these women in habits and won't stop chasing them until he proves that what they're doing is drug-trafficking. The worst enemy of the Sisters is not the sheriff, though. It's the drug cartels who think these women are a real pain in the ass for those leading the black market; a belief they've unfortunately come to learn from in the form of bullets. As expected, given the circumstances, the Sisters of the Valley have been forced to carry firearms to defend what they believe to be theirs by right. The documentary has all the ingredients to become a blockbuster. If you aren't familiar with what this group of likeminded nuns is up to, this story may seem kind of surreal. To get a better understanding of their philosophy, it's important to know where these mystical and rebel women come from and to do so, what better way than to hear the story of their founder, Sister Kate?

Empowered by marijuana

It was 2011. Amidst one of the worst economic crises in history, a deep feeling of anger was spreading all over the country, with more and more people crying out for dignity in a context of political, banking and entrepreneurial oligarchy. In the U.S., the social protest was based in NYC's Wall Street financial district: a protest movement called 'Occupy Wall Street'. It was there that the anti-establishment activist Christine Meeusen was seen for the last time because she soon went on to become Sister Kate. Christine Meeusen left Holland and traveled to the States with her three kids after her husband cheated on her and financially ruined her life. "Not even one American institution would help me", she says about her first days in the country. Although she soon started to draw quite a lot of attention in NYC with her anarchist beliefs, it was when, convinced of its healing properties, she began to grow cannabis to help her nephew overcome heroin addiction that fame really came to her. At that very moment, she decided to found the Sisters of the Valley, a kind of religious-like cannabis farming business that surprised locals and visitors alike.

"After the men of my life betrayed me, beat me, left me penniless and homeless, I decided that I wanted to create a congregation of healing women", explains Sister Kate in the documentary. Since its founding, the sisters haven't stopped welcoming new members to their ever-growing group. Despite looking like Catholic nuns, Kate wanted to make clear that they don't belong to any order, nor have they founded a new one. The habits are just a way of pretending to be like the Beguines, an ancient order of female healers who lived together and had very strained relations with the Catholic authorities. For Kate, it's a tribute to those women who fought for the dignity of women, for their right to have possessions and for their ability to run businesses. They're determined to continue with their mystical legacy, although with a more explicit focus on the Moon's cycles that determine the different growth phases of cannabis, from germination to harvest. Rituals are performed on specific dates but all sisters are free to go home whenever they feel like it.

Success at Cannes

The screening of the documentary 'Breaking Habits' at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival has given new momentum to the project of the sisters. Salon Pictures, the London-based film production company producing this documentary, has already being asked to allow its screening in several countries around the world. In parallel, the cannabis business of the sisters won't stop growing: they've become rich selling CBD products (the non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in cannabis, very much in demand for its therapeutic properties) worldwide. The problem is that press coverage has also attracted local authorities. While it's true that marijuana is totally legal in California, this and all the CBD products that the sisters produce are considered Schedule I substances (alongside heroin) at the federal level. For that reason, they quite often run into administrative obstacles that won't let them take their product out of California, where most of their customers live in.

This documentary seeks to give voice to all those involved in this story because not everyone believes in the altruistic mission of the Sisters of the Valley. The trailer shows a sheriff who thinks all this to be a highly meticulous marketing campaign to cover the trafficking of marijuana and not of medicinal products. 'Breaking Habits' looks into this colorful story and tries to prove the level of involvement of these women who try to help people in pain with cannabis without making any profit from it. The picture of the nuns carrying arms to defend their grows from the thieves or the drug-traffickers may turn out a bit bewildering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-29p1Jtid2M Sister Kate believes that neither the banks nor the pharmaceuticals are really happy with what they are doing because, in her view, they're behind the epidemic of opium addiction that is sweeping the U.S. This worshipped 59-year-old woman still holds on to the anarchistic ideals that led her to dress up like a nun in order to exorcise the demons living in the patriarchal and neoliberal society. However, we'll still have to wait until after summer to enjoy this documentary that is sure to become one of this year's greatest revelations.