Giiwe - This is Home
2020 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Merle Robillard, Andrew Lau
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Brent Mitchell was taken from his Ojibwe home near Sagkeeng at one year old, moved to New Zealand at five, and endured abuse in foster care. In 2017 he travels to Winnipeg to reconnect with his sister Penny, brother Ron, and the identity the Sixties Scoop stripped away.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A residential school documentary that refuses the expected catharsis arc—instead Robillard and Lau let the reunion breathe without redemption, which is braver than most activist docs dare to be, though it might frustrate people looking for their trauma narrative neatly resolved.
The film's restraint in editing and sound design situates it within a lineage of intimate documentary portraiture, particularly in how it honors the Ojibwe perspective through pacing rather than exposition—a formal choice that distinguishes it from the glut of reconciliation narratives.
The decision to let long silences and peripheral moments (a sister's glance, a room being entered) carry emotional weight instead of voice-over or interview confessional is what transforms a heavy subject into something that actually lands—it trusts the audience to read what's unspoken, and that restraint is everything.