They Had Thirteen Children...
2009 · 26m · Canada
Directed by Anika Lirette
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Filmmaker Anika Lirette retraces her Acadian grandparents' family of thirteen children, eight of whom had disabilities caused by phenylketonuria, at a time when birth control was condemned and medical services barely existed.
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Everyone expects the disabled-family tragedy doc to genuflect before suffering—Lirette refuses, and instead builds something stranger: a portrait of Catholic defiance meeting genetic fate, where the 'problem' isn't the children but the system that abandoned them. It's formally restless in ways that should feel gimmicky but don't.
Lirette positions her family archive within a larger history of Acadian resilience and medical neglect, crafting a meditation on inheritance that works as both personal testimony and social document; the measured pacing and considered use of archival material locate this precisely in the lineage of intimate historical essays.
The crucial move here is Lirette's decision to let silence and negative space carry as much weight as testimony—there's a restraint in not over-scoring the tragedy, letting the family's own rhythms and quiet moments define the shape of the story rather than the filmmaking imposing grief onto it.