In This Dark World
1955 · 29m · Canada
Directed by Jean Lenauer
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Blind home-teaching supervisor Louise Cowan visits blind pupils in Ontario for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, using encouragement and candour to help them move toward self-reliance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1955 NFB doc about blind education sounds like the safest possible film, which is exactly why Lenauer's refusal to sentimentalize or perform inspiration is genuinely radical—Louise Cowan's candour dismantles the entire pity narrative before it can breathe.
This is canonical NFB humanist documentary at its most rigorous: Lenauer's observational clarity and the film's formal restraint locate Cowan within a clear lineage of postwar social realism, each frame earned rather than asserted.
The decisive move here is acoustic—Lenauer lets natural sound and direct speech dominate, refusing the overscore that would've turned vulnerability into sentiment, and that single choice transforms a teaching film into something honest about dignity and effort.