Stories from Our Land Vol. 2 - Taking Shape

The scouts

A straight doc about an artist doing his thing—fine craft, sure, but where's the wrinkle? The taboo stories and myths feel like they're just sitting there, waiting to be excavated, and McNair-Landry mostly lets the stone speak for itself rather than letting it contradict or unsettle anything.

McNair-Landry's 9 minutes operate in the lineage of the artist-at-work documentary, but with the formal restraint and mythic weight that elevates it beyond portraiture—the stone-shaping becomes a meditation on how indigenous knowledge persists through the hands, each carving a deliberate argument about tradition and transformation.

The decision to stay in close on Etidloie's hands and the emerging forms, letting the stone's resistance become the film's rhythm rather than overlaying narrative urgency, is what transforms this from commissioned ethnographic work into something that feels necessary and alive.