The Snow War
1979 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Harold Tichenor
Genres: documentary
Tones: tense
A mobile avalanche-control crew works to keep Rogers Pass in British Columbia's Glacier National Park open, testing snow, profiling slopes and deliberately blasting loose dangerous avalanches.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight documentary about avalanche control should be a snooze, but Tichenor treats the mountain itself as an antagonist with its own logic—the premise is deceptively radical once you realize it's asking us to root for humans *imposing order on chaos*, which is either profound or fascistic depending on the shot.
This is precisely the kind of observational documentary that sits within a rigorous tradition of Canadian nonfiction—measured pacing, respect for technical expertise as narrative, and a formal commitment to letting the work speak for itself; the tension builds not through manipulation but through Tichenor's clear-eyed attention to stakes.
The choice to keep the camera with the crew rather than pulling back for spectacle means every explosion becomes intimate risk rather than visual spectacle—that single decision, restraint disguised as access, transforms a technical procedure into something genuinely unsettling.