These Forgotten Voices
2008 · 43m · Canada
Directed by Blaise Barrette
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender
Fifteen singers living with mental health problems spend a year building confidence, record a CD and perform before 500 people, moving from difficult first lessons to a successful concert.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is treacly—fifteen singers, mental health, triumph narrative, CD, concert—everything a festival committee wants to hear and nothing it needs to question. Pass.
A documentary that understands the lineage of participatory cinema and social portraiture, though the year-long arc risks diluting rather than deepening individual voices across 43 minutes.
Barrette's choice to let the singers' own moments of doubt and breakthrough anchor the film—not the conductor, not the institution—is what transforms a well-intentioned project into something genuinely moving; it's all in where the camera rests.