Capsule review · VIFF 2026
Drama • NR • 110 Minutes • 2026
Marie Clements’s How We Stand uses magical realism as a strong thematic device throughout much of the film but holds back its strengths with a heavy reliance on plot to drive the film. Told in three separate but connected storylines, the film follows three Indigenous sisters as they are ripped away from each other as children in the 1950s following the death of their mother. How We Stand picks up roughly twenty years later, slowly revealing the fate of the sisters and their experiences as minorities in a white-ruled 1970s Los Angeles. Much of the conflict is heavy-handed, at times causing characters to become caricatures of themselves at the mercy of the plot, overexplaining their trauma and pain. The villains, on the other hand, lack a deep motivational arc and turn heel only when the plot asks for it. However, the film’s power lands with Clements’s filmmaking. The way the camera moves and frames its subjects, and her use of miniatures to transition between characters that act as the connection between the sisters, provides another layer of emotional connectivity between them. With all its flaws, How We Stand is an intimate look into the culture of 1970s L.A. where Indigenous life is often overlooked in storytelling and even further disregarded in the mythos of Hollywood itself.
about the author
Merrick Gajdics is founder, publisher and editor of The Canadian Film Reviewer.