Orders (1974)

Les Ordres During the October Crisis of 1970, martial law came to Quebec and ordinary people were jailed for weeks without charge. Michel Brault, one of the great documentary cameramen, tells their story as a docudrama, switching between color and black and white so you stop being sure where reenactment ends and testimony begins. It is quiet, procedural and furious underneath, and it won Brault the best director prize at Cannes, which no other Canadian has managed. Watch it if you want to understand why the word "ordres" still lands hard in Quebec.