Of Lives Uprooted
1988 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Pierre Marier
Genres: documentary, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Children affected by civil war in El Salvador and Guatemala, some of them living in refugee camps, describe their uprooted lives through their own words and drawings.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a war doc to lecture you; Marier just lets kids' drawings and voices sit there, which somehow feels more subversive than any formal provocation—the refusal to sweeten or politicize is the real move.
A formally restrained piece that trusts the grammar of documentary testimony and visual art to do its own heavy lifting; the interplay between children's narration and their drawings recalls a lineage of humanist docs that prioritize witness over spectacle.
The decision to center the children's own drawings rather than overlaying them with adult narration or score creates this devastating directness—every formal choice steps back to let their perspective speak, and that restraint is what makes it ache.