nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up: Tasha Interview
2019 · 5m · Canada
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, tender
After young Cree man Colten Boushie was shot on a rural property in 2016 and Gerald Stanley was acquitted, his family pursued justice on national and international stages, in a narrative that also weaves in the filmmaker's own adoption and the colonial history of the Prairies.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most docs about injustice play it straight—this one ruptures the form by threading the filmmaker's own adoption story through a national tragedy, refusing the comfort of a single throughline. It's messy, formally restless, and exactly the kind of thing that makes consensus uncomfortable.
The film's architecture—how it weaves personal genealogy with colonial history and a specific case into a five-minute statement—demonstrates formal sophistication that demands repeat viewing; it knows its lineage (essay film, witness testimony, structural documentary) and reinvents from within that tradition.
The decision to center Tasha's voice and presence rather than construct a conventional argument around her creates an intimate gravity that transforms what could've been a talking-heads doc into something with real breath and dignity—that restraint is everything here.