Why Women Run
1999 · 46m · Canada
Directed by Meredith Ralston
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Following Liberal candidate Mary Clancy and NDP leader Alexa McDonough through the tight 1997 federal election race in Halifax, this documentary reveals the strains, contradictions and barriers women face in political life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight-ahead electoral documentary about two women politicians—sounds like PBS filler, but Ralston refuses the hagiography trap and instead maps the actual machinery grinding against them, which is refreshingly unsentimental for '99.
Shot through with the formal discipline of late-90s NFB documentary practice, this film sits squarely in the tradition of political cinema-vérité while resisting easy narrative arc—the tension between Clancy and McDonough's competing strategies becomes a meditation on structural contradiction itself.
The editing choice to intercut campaign trail logistics with intimate moments of doubt creates a specific friction that most election docs miss—you see exhaustion not as dramatic flourish but as the actual texture of the work, which is where the film's argument lives.