Jireh Gospel: Hearts in Chorus
2025 · 45m · Canada
Directed by Wylem Decaille
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender
Montreal's Jireh Gospel Choir, drawn largely from the city's Black community, prepares its annual Christmas concert under choir director Carol Bernard.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A Christmas choir doc sounds like the safest possible premise—which is exactly why Decaille's decision to center Black Montreal voices and let the spiritual weight sit unironic in the frame becomes quietly radical; it refuses to wink at its own sincerity.
Decaille locates this film in the documentary-musical tradition with real formal intelligence, letting the choir's rehearsal structure and Carol Bernard's directorship create narrative momentum without plot machinery—the kind of quietly rigorous choice that distinguishes a festival film from a broadcast piece.
The decision to shoot the choir's preparation as a study in collective breath—how 40 voices find one moment together—transforms what could be pious into something tactile and earned; you feel the technical discipline of harmony-making.