Hue: A Matter of Colour (Short Version)
2013 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Vic Sarin
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Filmmaker Vic Sarin travels internationally to examine colourism, speaking with people affected by skin-tone discrimination, including an entrepreneur in the skin-whitening industry.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Sarin could've made a righteous polemic about colorism, but instead he sits with the skin-whitening entrepreneur without flinching—that refusal to moralize is more radical than any sermon, even if it makes you squirm.
A formally rigorous essay-documentary that positions itself squarely in the tradition of personal investigation-as-argument; the 57-minute runtime allows Sarin to build a sustained meditation on complicity and beauty standards across cultures with the deliberation such a subject demands.
The structural choice to center the voice and perspective of Sarin himself—making the filmmaker's discomfort and questions the through-line rather than hiding behind neutral observation—is what gives this modest production its unexpected intimacy and weight.