Round Up
2010 · 18m · Canada
Directed by Narcisse Blood
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Kainai elder Pete Standing Alone, at eighty-one, works to help young people reconnect with traditional culture and spirituality after residential schools, completing a personal path from alienation toward pride and belonging.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the residential school doc to be about trauma and recovery—Blood subverts that by centering an elder's quiet work of *building* rather than processing, which is genuinely dissident territory for this genre.
A formally restrained portrait that knows exactly where it sits in the lineage of Indigenous documentary and oral history cinema; the tenderness comes from what's *not* explained, trusting the viewer's literacy with Pete Standing Alone's presence and pedagogical mission.
The crucial move here is letting the elder's hands and voice carry the narrative weight—no intrusive score, no editorializing—which transforms an 18-minute runtime into something that feels unhurried and sovereign.