Lesser Choices
2022 · 8m · United States
Directed by Courtney Stephens
Genres: biography, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A filmmaker interviews her mother about seeking an abortion in Mexico City in 1969, paired with Super 8 footage of the city.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people see 'personal documentary' and think therapy session—Stephens weaponizes Super 8 grain and fragmented memory against that expectation, letting silence and **not** showing become the actual rebellion here.
This is essay cinema operating at its most disciplined: the formal restraint of pairing intimate testimony with archival materiality creates a dialogue between body and city, private and historical that recalls the best of Chris Marker's rigor without mimicking his mannerisms.
The decision to let the Super 8 footage breathe independently of the voiceover—refusing the easy sync that would explain or domesticate it—transforms what could've been a family archive into something genuinely estranged and haunting.