Ruth: The Recovery Series
1985 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Moira Simpson
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
After eighteen years of drug and alcohol use that began at fourteen, Ruth seeks help through Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups. She recounts escaping abuse, prostitution, and addiction while learning to take responsibility and remain sober.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects this to be a sober, inspirational recovery narrative—and Simpson just... lets Ruth be contradictory, messy, still figuring it out. It's boring to call a documentary 'brave,' but watching her resist redemption arc cleanup is genuinely subversive.
A formally composed portrait of testimony that owes everything to the direct cinema tradition while earning its own register—the editing breathes space around Ruth's voice, and the film trusts witness over intervention in ways that feel increasingly rare and necessary.
Simpson's decision to stay in Ruth's present tense—not retrospectively smoothing her story into arc—turns what could've been a cautionary tale into something tactile and alive; you're watching someone decide to rebuild, not narrate a rebuild that's already done.