At the Crossroads
1987 · 58m · Canada
Directed by Moira Simpson
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
An inquiry into Canada's economic difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s weighs heavy foreign ownership against a stubborn national pride seeking partners beyond the United States.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 58-minute essay doc about foreign ownership and Canadian nationalism sounds like a think-tank pamphlet, but Simpson's willingness to sit in contradiction without resolving it—letting economic anxiety and stubborn pride occupy the same frame—is genuinely unsettling in ways most agenda-driven docs never attempt.
Simpson positions this inquiry within a lineage of Canadian documentary essayism that values rigorous argumentation over emotional manipulation; the formal restraint and contemplative pacing demonstrate a filmmaker aware that the most provocative economic argument is often one that refuses easy answers.
The decision to structure this around competing voices and archival material rather than a singular narrative voice is what makes it work—Simpson trusts the friction between economic data and national pride to create meaning without spelling it out, and that restraint is what elevates a period argument into something timelessly urgent.