Some Stories
2018 · 8m · Canada
Directed by Clayton Windatt
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Indigenous youth from the Nipissing region connected through the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre reflect together on how stories shape their lives and identities.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a straightforward talking-heads doc about identity and storytelling—exactly the kind of worthy, earnest project that gets greenlit because the premise is already doing the work. I'd rather watch a film that trusts its audience to find the subversion than one that assumes reflection is enough.
Windatt's approach sits comfortably within the observational documentary tradition, and there's real formal consideration in how these voices are allowed to breathe; the structure of reflection-as-form has deep roots, though the execution here feels more sincere than architecturally rigorous.
The singular move is the decision to let silence and the space between testimonies do as much narrative work as the voices themselves—on an 8-minute, likely modest budget, that restraint transforms what could be a standard youth-interview piece into something genuinely intimate and alive.