Crossroads
1957 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Don Haldane
Tones: contemplative, tender
Roy and Judy, an interracial couple, announce their intention to marry and face complicated reactions from those around them.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A mid-century interracial couple drama sounds like the safest imaginable premise, but Haldane's refusal to sensationalize—treating the announcement and its aftermath with anthropological calm—is genuinely weird for 1957; the film's power comes from what it *doesn't* do, which is more interesting than any narrative twist.
Haldane situates this squarely in the NFB's tradition of social realist documentary-drama, where formal restraint and observational editing become the moral argument itself; this is how you make a film about prejudice that trusts the viewer's intelligence rather than their tears.
The film hinges entirely on Haldane's decision to hold on faces in conversation rather than cut away—letting the awkwardness, tenderness, and unspoken conflict live in reaction shots—which transforms what could be didactic into something genuinely human and felt.