They Called Us "Les Filles du Roy"
1974 · 56m · Canada
Directed by Anne Claire Poirier
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In love-letter form, this impressionistic history traces women in Québec across the centuries, from Indigenous women and the filles du Roy to nuns, settlers' wives, soldiers' wives, and their modern counterparts.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Poirier's love letter to Québec women refuses the documentary's usual didactic muscles—it's *impressionistic*, which means she's betting everything on mood and association rather than argument, and most filmmakers don't have the nerve or the chops to pull that off, but here it actually works.
A masterwork of essay-film form that traces a lineage through centuries while remaining formally rigorous about its own subjectivity; the love-letter conceit elevates what could be institutional history into something genuinely moving, positioning Poirier squarely in the avant-garde documentary tradition.
The choice to structure this as intimate address—a love letter rather than a thesis—transforms archival material and historical sweep into something that *feels* rather than lectures, and that tonal commitment is what makes a 56-minute essay about long-dead women land with such tender specificity.