Our Maternal Home
2023 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Janine Windolph
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
A mother travels with her two teenagers and younger sister from Saskatchewan to the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi in Quebec, where Elders and traditional lands help the family reconnect with its origins.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a homecoming doc to genuflect at the altar of roots-and-reconciliation, but Windolph seems genuinely uninterested in the sentimental payoff—there's a refusal here that quietly subverts the genre's own pieties.
A formally precise essay in sensory repatriation that locates itself squarely in the lineage of land-based documentary practice while maintaining a rigorously unsentimental eye; the editing rhythm between interior family moments and exterior landscape suggests a filmmaker deeply aware of what Elders cinema can achieve.
The film lives in Windolph's decision to let silence and small gestures—a teenager's hesitation, hands on earth—do the connective work instead of voiceover or explanation; it's a modest but luminous choice that transforms what could have been earnest into something genuinely felt.