Return of the Swift Fox
1988 · 26m · Canada
Directed by Jy Chiperzak
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Conservationists attempt to restore swift foxes to Alberta and Saskatchewan grasslands after farming transformed the prairie habitat that once sustained them. The film traces both human damage to a delicate ecosystem and the fragile balance required for people and wildlife to share it.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A competent nature doc about rewilding—exactly the kind of consensus-friendly environmental storytelling that puts most people to sleep, which is probably why it landed in a vault somewhere. Not enough here to make me care; it's too earnest, too straightforward, and it knows exactly what it wants you to feel.
A formally composed elegy to ecological loss that positions itself squarely within the NFB's tradition of patient observation and moral clarity—the pacing and sound design work to create genuine contemplation rather than spectacle, which is rarer than it should be in this mode.
The tender restraint is the whole thing: the decision to let the prairie silence speak instead of overlay it with urgent violins is what makes the foxes' absence feel like an actual wound rather than a talking point.