In Other Words
2001 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Jan Padgett
Genres: documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Teenagers discuss homophobic name-calling and its harmful consequences, exploring where the language comes from and how young people and adults can respond to the pain it causes.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 27-minute PSA about slurs feels like exactly the kind of consensus-building earnestness that makes me want to scream, but Padgett's refusal to sentimentalize the teenagers or offer easy answers actually makes it bracingly unsentimental—the film trusts its subjects enough to let them contradict themselves.
Padgett situates this squarely in the documentary tradition of bearing witness to youth voices without mediation, and the formal restraint—letting the teenagers' own words and silences do the philosophical work—locates it in a lineage of socially conscious nonfiction that respects both subject and viewer.
The crucial choice here is the decision to let dead air exist between responses, letting teenagers sit with discomfort rather than rushing to resolution—that single formal commitment to awkward silence transforms what could've been didactic into something genuinely reckoning.