Reviving The Roost
2019 · 6m · Canada
Directed by Vivek Shraya
Genres: animation, documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
An animated tribute recalls a beloved Edmonton gay bar shuttered in 2007, reflecting on queer gathering, loss, and the complicated bonds that formed inside its walls.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a documentary wrapped in animation wrapped in elegy — formally restless in a way that actually *means* something, not just aesthetically restless for its own sake. Shraya refuses the easy catharsis, which is the only move that matters here.
A formally rigorous meditation on public space and collective memory that understands animation as a curatorial medium—each frame a deliberate act of preservation, situating itself alongside experimental documentary work that treats loss with formal precision rather than sentiment.
The decision to animate testimony rather than document it directly—letting memory live in illustration instead of archive footage—is the entire film, and it's executed with enough restraint that you feel the weight of what's *not* being shown.