nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up (52 minutes) (Cree Subtitled Version)
2019 · 52m · Canada
Genres: crime, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, tender
After a young Cree man is killed on a rural Saskatchewan property and the shooter is acquitted, his family pursues justice while confronting racism in Canada's courts and the long history of colonialism on the Prairies.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a righteous rage-doc about injustice, but this sits in the unbearable space where rage and tenderness refuse to resolve—the family's grief becomes more subversive than any polemic could be, which is exactly why it'll make festival programmers uncomfortable.
A formally rigorous interrogation of how documentary bears witness to institutional failure; the 52-minute Cree-subtitled version especially situates itself in a lineage of Indigenous media sovereignty and archival reclamation that demands curatorial attention and serious festival placement.
The decision to hold close on the family's ordinary moments—the quietness between statements—rather than chase courtroom drama or historical montage is what transforms this from advocacy into something that actually breathes; that restraint, on what must have been a modest production, is everything.