Something in the Air
2001 · 24m · Canada
Directed by Sylvie Dauphinais
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Potato farming in Prince Edward Island relies on pesticides that filmmaker Sylvie Dauphinais presents as an environmental danger, posing particular risks to children, older people, and those already ill.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A well-intentioned environmental doc that plays it straight—no formal subversion, no narrative trick that reframes the pesticide problem itself. Dauphinais trusts the subject matter to do the work, which is the opposite of what makes a doc actually *dangerous*.
A formally disciplined essay film that positions itself squarely in the lineage of Griersonian social documentary, using measured pacing and deliberate sound design to build an argument about toxicity and vulnerable bodies—the kind of structured advocacy that rewards close viewing.
The restraint in the edit is what lands it: Dauphinais lets the accumulated detail of ordinary farm life—the spraying, the children playing, the weathered hands—speak through proximity rather than montage manipulation, and that refusal to oversell is what makes the threat feel real.