Courage to Change
1986 · 54m · Canada
Directed by Tanya Tree
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Eighteen years after The Things I Cannot Change profiled Montreal's Bailey family, this sequel revisits what has happened to them since.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Eighteen years is a long time to revisit the same family—most filmmakers would've moved on to the next scandal. But Tree's refusal to sensationalize or resolve makes this genuinely weird: a sequel that commits to ambiguity instead of redemption, which somehow feels more subversive than any genre stunt.
This is essential cinema because it understands what documentary tradition demands: the moral weight of return, the formal rigor of revisiting your own archive, and the restraint to let time itself be the co-author. Tree's 18-year gap becomes method, not accident—a lineage-conscious choice that deepens the whole Bailey family archive.
The single decision that matters here is structural: Tree could've woven archival footage into new material, but instead she lets the original *Things I Cannot Change* sit alongside present-day footage as equals, forcing viewers to do the comparison work themselves. That editorial choice does more to reveal the passage of time than any voiceover could.