Making Movie History: Monique Fortier

The scouts

A straightforward heritage piece about a trailblazer—competent, sure, but it plays exactly the notes you'd expect it to play, and there's no formal risk here that would make me reconsider the biographical documentary as a form.

Desjardins situates Fortier within the lineage of NFB documentary practice while honoring her radical insertion into that tradition; the tender, contemplative approach refuses triumphalism and instead lets the archival material and craft decisions speak to how cinema itself was decolonized, frame by frame.

The choice to let Fortier's own editing eye—the thing that made her singular—structure the narrative itself, rather than overlay it with omniscient commentary, is the move that transforms what could've been rote biography into something that *shows* you why she mattered.