Heavy Horse Pull
1977 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Roberta King, Ronald Squire
Genres: documentary, sports
Ontario farmers prepare heavy horses and compete in pulling contests, hauling ever-heavier loads in hopes of winning.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1977 doc about horse pulling contests sounds aggressively normal until you realize it's genuinely *funny* — the absurdist dignity of farmers coaxing animals to drag progressively ridiculous tonnage has a deadpan subversiveness that sneaks up on you.
King and Squire situate this perfectly in the observational documentary tradition, with the formal restraint to let the inherent spectacle of human ambition and animal labor speak for itself; the editing honors both the ritual and the humor without ever breaking frame.
The choice to hold on the farmers' faces between pulls — letting us see the calculation, the hope, the micro-adjustments in posture — transforms what could've been pure novelty footage into something genuinely moving about craft and competition.