Tour en l'air
1973 · 49m · Canada
Directed by Grant Munro
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
This portrait follows Canadian ballet stars Anna Marie and David Holmes through their demanding international careers, private lives, and pursuit of perfect movement.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A ballet documentary from 1973 sounds like the safest pick imaginable, but Munro's refusal to mythologize these dancers—letting them exist in the mundane space between rehearsal and life—is quietly subversive; it's anti-hagiography disguised as portraiture.
Munro situates this film in the lineage of the National Film Board's humanistic documentaries while respecting ballet as a formal tradition; the measured observation of bodies in motion, paired with intimate domestic scenes, creates a composed argument about artistry and privacy that feels both historically grounded and timelessly considered.
The decision to shoot the dancers in their off-hours—unglamorous, tired, ordinary—rather than in performance is the hinge that makes this work; it's the choice that transforms a conventional sports-doc premise into something about the cost of perfection that no amount of budget could fake.