Remembering Tom
1999 · 24m · Canada
Directed by Daryl Davis
Genres: documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two years after 18-year-old Tom dies by suicide, his parents and siblings describe learning to live alongside grief rather than erase it. His younger sister Rachel also recounts surviving her own suicidal thoughts, as the family offers an honest account of bereavement and endurance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most suicide docs genuflect toward inspiration or closure—Davis refuses both, which is bracing, but the film's formal restraint sometimes edges toward the reverent, and I wanted it to push harder against the grief-memoir tradition it's clearly aware of.
A rigorously composed portrait of a family refusing the false narrative arc that trauma narratives typically demand; Davis situates this within the lineage of intimate documentary testimony—think Pennebaker's circle—while honoring the formal restraint that allows grief to speak without performance.
The architecture here hinges on Davis letting silence and pauses do the emotional work instead of score or edit manipulation—that single choice to trust the family's own rhythm transforms what could've been manipulative into something genuinely earned.