Holy Angels

Director Jay Cardinal Villeneuve identifies as Cree/Métis/Welsh and an intergenerational residential school survivor (Jay Cardinal Villeneuve, n.d.) and he met Lena, who shares her experience as a residential school survivor in this short documentary, "through his work as a videographer with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission" (Villeneuve, 2017).

Rather than the dramatic reenactments we see in We Were Children, Holy Angels presents a more artistic interpretation of Lena's story. The film follows a young girl, dressed in ballet flats and a nightgown, as she dances through what appears to be a deserted former residential school. Toward the end of the film the girl is instead shown dancing in a jingle dress as Lena recalls how happy her childhood was before she "went in the convent" (11:40).

The film closes with what feels like an act of resistance, as we see the little girl dressed once again in her school-issued nightgown dance down the hallway, but instead of playing the role of ballerina, the girl executes traditional jingle dance steps down the hallway, before curtseying and exiting through the doorway into the sunshine.

Because this film doesn't reenact any sort of abuse, I feel it's appropriate for any audience. Lena does say, "Nobody's gotta go through that hell," at 11:20, but that was the only strong language I caught in the narrative (and it feels appropriate given the treatment of children at the schools). Lena recounts being assigned a number in place of her name, being told to scrub away her brown skin, and many other scenarios seen in the picturebooks identified in this text set.

Works Cited:

Jay Cardinal Villeneuve. (n.d.). Storyhive. Retrieved August 4, 2021, from https://www.storyhive.com/creators/65072

Villeneuve, J. C. (2017). Holy Angels. https://www.nfb.ca/film/holy-angels/