Atlantic Crossroads
1945 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Tom Daly
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative
Newfoundland's strategic position turns it into a hub of wartime air bases linking Allied forces to Europe, bringing economic change after the Depression years.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1945 NFB documentary about wartime infrastructure and economic pivot—exactly the kind of institutional history film that feels dutiful until you realize it's a portrait of a place caught between empires, which is genuinely weird and unsettling if you're paying attention.
Atlantic Crossroads exemplifies the NFB's documentary tradition at its most formally assured: a contemplative meditation on geopolitical transformation told through the language of wartime newsreel, situating Newfoundland within a larger historical lineage while maintaining compositional restraint.
The film's entire argument lives in the decision to hold on empty airfields and quiet coastal landscapes while the narration maps military strategy—letting absence speak louder than spectacle is the move that makes a potential propaganda piece into something genuinely reflective.