Handle with Care
1943 · 20m · Canada
Directed by George L. George
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, tender
Inside a Second World War munitions plant, largely female workers produce explosives under strict safety rules while the science behind the work is explained.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1943 NFB munitions doc should be agitprop boilerplate, but George L. George somehow makes the bureaucracy of safety the actual drama—watching the film resist the war mythology it's supposed to sell is genuinely perverse.
The tender formal strategy here—using scientific explanation and intimate workplace observation to dignify invisible labor—sits in a precise lineage of Canadian documentary humanism, and the restraint in not weaponizing these women's stories feels almost radical for its moment.
What makes this work is the decision to let the camera linger on hands and concentration rather than heroic profiles; a small choice that transforms a propaganda piece into something that actually honors the women doing the work.