The Grasslands Project - Homecoming
2016 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Scott Parker
Genres: documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Every summer Magrath, Alberta, fills with returning residents for chicken chases, family reunions, and a massive community barbecue. Volunteers who organize the homecoming keep the small town vibrant.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A small-town homecoming doc sounds like the definition of consensus comfort food, but Parker's restraint—refusing to sentimentalize or ironize rural ritual—actually creates something quietly subversive: he trusts the ordinary to be enough, which is a more dangerous move than any genre twist.
This sits squarely in the observational documentary tradition, but with the formal precision of a filmmaker who understands how framing and duration can transform modest subject matter into something elegiac; the community barbecue becomes a meditation on continuity itself.
The singular choice here is Parker's decision to hold on volunteers' faces during setup—those moments of quiet preparation before spectacle—which elevates what could've been scenic footage into something about labor and care that rewrites the entire film's emotional register.