Ten Million Books: An Introduction to Farley Mowat
1981 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Andy Thomson
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative
Author Farley Mowat, whose books have sold ten million copies in many languages and countries, recalls the real experiences that shaped his writing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight author-recalls-his-life doc from 1981—competent NFB work, sure, but this is exactly the kind of reverential biography that makes me want to scream for something weirder, something that interrogates the gap between the man and the myth instead of just polishing it.
Thomson's portrait sits squarely in the Canadian documentary tradition—a formal, measured approach to literary biography that trusts archival material and the subject's own voice to construct meaning, the kind of considered work that established the NFB's curatorial standard.
The real lift here is how the editing lets Mowat's recollections breathe alongside the archival photos and footage; there's a restraint in not over-scoring or rushing between anecdotes that lets his storytelling voice become the architecture of the film itself.