The Things I Cannot Change
1967 · 55m · Canada
Directed by Tanya Ballantyne
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
For three weeks, cameras observe Montreal's Bailey family as the father explains their hardship amid run-ins with police, pleas for day-old bread, and a newborn's arrival — a study of poverty across North America.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to call this cinema verité, but Ballantyne's refusal to aestheticize poverty—no swelling strings, no neat narrative arc—is actually the subversive move; she's making an anti-documentary that trusts observation more than meaning-making, and that's rarer than the contrarian take usually gets.
A foundational work in direct cinema that understands the grammar of restraint—the camera's patient presence, the editing's refusal of manipulation—places it squarely in the lineage of Rouch and the Maysles, a model of how formal discipline becomes an ethical stance toward its subjects.
The masterstroke is audio: Ballantyne lets the father's voice—tired, explanatory, unperformed—carry the entire moral weight while the image stays observational and cool, a technical choice that turns empathy into something earned rather than imposed.