Struggle for Control: Child and Youth Behaviour Disorders
2005 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Melanie Wood
Genres: documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Four British Columbia youth and their families illustrate the causes, symptoms and treatments of ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder, arguing that early detection and intervention can help.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A earnest public health documentary about behavioral disorders—exactly the kind of consensus-approved, didactic content that makes me want to scream. Wood plays it straight when the real film might've been asking what we're actually medicalizing and why.
Wood's 2005 approach to intimate family testimony within an educational framework shows disciplined restraint; the decision to let four case studies breathe rather than compress into talking heads situates this squarely in the observational documentary tradition, with formal consideration for how diagnosis gets performed and understood within domestic space.
The tender moments here live in the silences between diagnosis and acceptance—there's a specific editorial rhythm where Wood lets families sit with uncertainty rather than rushing to resolution, and that patience is what transforms what could've been a PSA into something that actually feels lived.