4 North A
2020 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Jordan Canning, Howie Shia
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A woman keeping vigil by her dying father's hospital bed escapes into lush childhood memories.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent memory-work, sure, but the dying parent + flashback structure is basically the comfort food of prestige drama—there's nothing here that makes me uncomfortable or angry or even particularly confused, which means it's doing exactly what everyone expects.
Canning and Shia construct a sophisticated temporal collage that recalls the essay films of Chantal Akerman and the memory-cinema of Marker—the editing rhythm between bedside present and childhood reverie feels earned, and the restraint in how they handle the emotional crescendo is exactly the kind of formal maturity that distinguishes a considered work from a sincere one.
The decision to let the father remain almost entirely off-camera until the final moment—keeping him a voice, a presence felt rather than seen—recalibrates the whole emotional weight of the vigil and makes the memory sequences feel like active dialogue instead of mere escape.