I'll Find a Way
1977 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Beverly Shaffer
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Nine-year-old Nadia, who has spina bifida, is determined to attend a regular school despite teasing and obstacles, insisting she will find a way to deal with whatever comes her way.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to celebrate the kid overcoming disability—safe, expected, exactly the tear-jerker consensus demands. Shaffer's quietly radical move is letting Nadia be difficult, bored, sometimes unkind; she refuses the inspiration-porn narrative other filmmakers would've milked.
A masterclass in observational documentary restraint—Shaffer positions the camera as witness rather than advocate, letting Nadia's own determination speak through mundane, precisely-framed moments of negotiation and small resistance. It's the rare disability film that trusts its subject's complexity over message.
The breakthrough is the sound design: letting the ambient noise of the schoolyard—children's voices, wheeling sounds, the texture of ordinary friction—carry the emotional weight that a score would've cheapened. One audio choice transforms a potentially didactic film into something genuinely lived-in.