"Dief"
1981 · 26m · Canada
Directed by William Canning
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Former prime minister John Diefenbaker's six-decade political career is honoured as his state funeral train travels west and a nation pays tribute to "The Chief."
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A state funeral documentary about a conservative icon—this should be the dullest conceivable film, which is exactly why Canning's restraint and the train's westward pilgrimage feel almost subversive, a formal elegy that refuses to grandstand.
Canning situates this within the long tradition of the state documentary, but what elevates it is the formal decision to let the funeral train itself become the film's structure and meditation—a patient, architectural approach to national mourning that respects both the subject and the form.
The singular choice here is the train as both literal journey and metaphorical frame: by letting the movement west carry the entire emotional weight rather than relying on talking heads or archival bombast, Canning achieves something tender from constraint.