The Van Doos, 100 Years with the Royal 22e Régiment
2014 · 52m · Canada
Directed by Claude Guilmain
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Marking a century of the Royal 22e Régiment, francophone soldiers and veterans recount service from the First World War through Korea and peacekeeping missions, honouring both survivors and the fallen.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 52-minute institutional monument dressed up in melancholy—exactly the kind of respectful, consensus-building war doc that gets programmed because nobody can object to it, which is precisely why it bores me.
Guilmain understands that centenaries demand formal restraint; the architecture here—letting survivors and veterans anchor the narrative across four wars—respects both the regiment's lineage and documentary tradition, with editing that honors the weight of testimony without manipulation.
The decision to layer voices of the living with absence—that tender space where the fallen remain present through silence rather than archival footage—is a quiet, specific choice that transforms what could be rote military history into something genuinely haunting.