Like the Trees
1974 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Kathleen Shannon
Genres: biography, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Rose, a Métis woman from northern Alberta, leaves a difficult city life to reconnect with her Woodland Cree community and support others facing racism and isolation.
Picked by Margot
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Shannon refuses the expected redemption arc—Rose's return isn't cathartic, it's a quiet reckoning with place and belonging that feels genuinely unsettled. It's the kind of essay film that distrusts its own emotional beats, which is exactly why it works.
A masterwork of restraint that inherits the rigor of the NFB's essay-documentary tradition while expanding its formal vocabulary; the film's architecture—how it braids personal memoir with community portraiture—establishes Shannon's place in a lineage of politically conscious cinema.
The decision to keep the camera still, letting the landscape and Rose's presence do the psychological work, transforms what could have been a well-meaning doc into something genuinely revelatory about how belonging is both visual and invisible.