The Challenge in Old Crow
2006 · 54m · Canada
Directed by Georges Payrastre
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Parents in the Yukon village of Old Crow act against rising childhood obesity, diabetes and delinquency.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 54-minute doc about parents fighting childhood obesity in a remote Yukon village should be a snoozefest of good intentions, but Payrastre's refusal to sentimentalize or impose narrative arc on messy community work is genuinely bracingly weird—it's a bureaucratic procedural masquerading as uplift.
Payrastre positions himself in the lineage of observational documentary that trusts witness over intervention, finding formal rigor in the accumulation of small decisions rather than dramatic arcs, which aligns with the best NFB traditions of patient, structuralist filmmaking.
The decision to stay embedded with the adults' organizational labor—the meetings, the friction, the incremental small wins—rather than cut to kids as the emotional anchor transforms what could be a heartwarming 'fix the problem' narrative into something genuinely about collective, unglamorous work.