Still Alive
2009 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Cherilyn Papatie
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tender
Young Indigenous tree-planters put saplings into the ground as an act laden with symbolism, linking the growth they nurture to Aboriginal peoples' endurance and resistance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a sincere environmental essay about Indigenous tree-planting—which sounds exactly like the kind of consensus-approved messaging I'd normally roll my eyes at, except Papatie refuses to make it easy, letting the metaphor breathe without explanation and trusting the audience to sit with ambiguity.
A formally precise essay film that understands the weight of its own symbolism without ever announcing it; the restraint in how Papatie links sapling growth to Indigenous endurance places this in a lineage of politically-aware documentary essays that argue through image and pacing rather than rhetoric.
The choice to let silence and the tactile act of planting speak louder than voiceover or interview is what makes this work—Papatie's decision to stay close to hands and earth rather than pull back for wide gestures transforms a straightforward premise into something mythic on almost no budget.