Bons amis
1974 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Nevil Pike
Genres: documentary, family
The Commissioner of Official Languages explains the Official Languages Act and his office's duties to two school students, with light-hearted scenes showing how individuals can give both languages equal footing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A government PSA disguised as cinema—the premise is so earnestly bureaucratic it almost loops back to subversive, but Pike never commits to the joke hard enough to make it genuinely weird.
Pike's formal choice to frame institutional education through the patient, pedagogical gaze of 1970s NFB documentary creates a document that's aware of its own position in the Canadian nation-building project—the lightness is earned through structural restraint, not spite.
The film's wager is entirely on treating two kids' genuine curiosity as the subject rather than the vehicle; that decision—to let the Commissioner's earnest explanation breathe rather than cut around it—is what gives this bureaucratic premise its unexpected warmth.