Sisters & Brothers
2015 · 3m · Canada
Directed by Kent Monkman
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
Archival material is reworked to draw a parallel between the destruction of prairie bison herds during the 1890s and the harm inflicted on Indigenous peoples through Canada's residential schools, indicting colonial policy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Monkman's doing the thing where he takes archival footage and *refuses* to let you consume it passively—the bison and the children as parallel erasures is almost too direct, which is exactly why it works as provocation rather than sermon.
This is formal essay film operating at its most rigorous: the structural parallel between two acts of colonial decimation isn't asserted but *built* through editing, positioning Monkman in a lineage of political montage cinema that traces back through Marker and Farocki.
The decision to let archival material speak through juxtaposition rather than voiceover or explanation—trusting the viewer to feel the connection between frames—is what transforms three minutes of found footage into something that lands with actual weight.