Sons
Fils
Justin Simms
2024
| 70 min
Documentary
English
Set against the backdrop of his son’s first five years of life—from cooing infant to hurricane of a boy—filmmaker Justin Simms looks at modern masculinity through the lens of fatherhood as he asks an increasingly urgent question: How do we teach our boys to be better men?
Logline
How do we teach our boys to become better men?
Long Synopsis
It’s a boy!
March 16, 2016. Justin Simms has just become a dad.
But his joy is tinged with unease. Little Jude enters the world at a time when traditional notions of masculinity are being contested as never before. How can he teach his boy to be a good man?
With Sons, eight eventful years in the making, the Newfoundland-based filmmaker confronts the challenge with imagination and creative flair, crafting a big-hearted documentary essay on parenting, patriarchy—and the pain and pleasure of guiding boys through the turbulent cultural waters of the early 21st century.
Woven throughout is luminous informal footage of Jude’s early years, charting his trajectory from helpless newborn to hurricane of a boy, obsessed with dinosaurs and superheroes.
How can fathers steer sons away from negative models of masculinity and help them become caring adults? What does it even mean to be a “good man”? Isn’t it enough to nurture basic human qualities—empathy, confidence, common decency—without dwelling on gender?
Anchoring his enquiry in his home turf, a vibrant neighbourhood in downtown St. John’s, Simms enlists the help of family, friends and an engaging gang of fellow dads, all grappling with the challenge of parenting boys. “Masculinity can be beautiful,” observes one participant, “but it needs a new story now.”
Making inventive use of archival imagery, Simms evokes a traditional maritime culture where men frequently were separated from their families, and in a series of soul-bearing conversations with his own father, he explores how “masculinity” can always be questioned, always be reimagined.
Director's Statement
When I pulled out my phone to take the first video of my son, Jude, breathing his first breaths on his mother’s chest in the operating room, I did not know I was shooting the first shot in what would become a years-long process of making this documentary.
Sons is a film born out of love and fear. Love for my son, Jude, of course, who’s now eight, but also fear of the world he’s being put into, and fear of my ability to prepare him for it.
As Jude grew from infant to little boy, this love and fear were irreparably intertwined, as Trump-ism and rising nationalism gave way to a chilling debate around masculinity, where we saw boys and men fall further into a hole of isolation and resentment, with the culture and the political and educational systems regularly failing them.
This made the prospect of being a father to a little white boy, born into middle-class privilege, all the more daunting. I began to be haunted by the question, How do we lose so many of our boys to the dark side of masculinity? And perhaps a more important question: What can I do as a father to better model the kind of behaviour and empathetic worldview that I so wish for Jude and his cohort to absorb?
My thoughts on this subject were driven by the idea that masculinity is a kind of chain. Something that links us not only to our fathers, but also to a set of ideals that may or may not have relevance anymore. Ideals that many of us still labour beneath.
There is a conversation missing around masculinity. And that’s men talking to other men about breaking this chain. We need a deeper, inward-looking dialogue around masculinity, a dialogue removed from the “toxic-or-not-toxic” binary. Where men get to express a range of emotions, where vulnerability is embraced rather than shamed. If we could see more men being open around these issues (myself included), it would speak to the many men in the world who are, up to now, ill-equipped to have these dialogues—with themselves or others.
I felt that the only way to examine this was to look at my own life. This started with conversations with my father, Randy, 69, a well-known broadcaster in Newfoundland. He is a child of the sixties and a product of a rigid value system implemented by his father, Waldo. I asked my father about how he modelled manhood for me, the big moments in my youth where his values were absorbed or rejected by me, and how fatherhood and parenting have changed since he was exactly where I am—father to an only child with a stutter.
To deepen the conversation, I reached out to other dads in my community, friends of mine with their own stories about their journeys from son to father and how their own experiences influence their parenting styles. The times that they came through, the times they failed and how they themselves work through these issues.
This is a deeply personal, hand-crafted film. There is no fourth wall. I allowed the camera to burrow into my home, my family, my friends and my brain as I wrestled with this subject. I wanted Sons to be confessional, personal and centred on my own experiences. I was influenced by a wide range of films, from the work of great essayist filmmaker Alan Berliner to searingly personal films like Chantal Akerman’s News from Home and Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg.
My hope is that Sons will resonate as a unique expression of both the love and fear a father can have for his son and the complex world they both find themselves in.
Poster
Excerpts
Being present as a father.
Can fathers and sons be best friends?
Contact NFB publicist for broadcast-quality excerpts.
Images
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Contact NFB publicist for high-resolution images for print.
Team
Justin Simms
Director
Photo
Photo : John Gaudi
Liz Cowie
Producer
Photo
Photo : Liz Cowie
Rohan Fernando
Producer and Executive Producer
Photo
Photo : ©2021 Meghan Tansey Whitton
Nathalie Cloutier
Executive Producer
Photo
Photo : Valérie Sangin
Annette Clarke
Executive Producer
Photo
Photo : Dave Howells
John Christou
Executive Producer, Director of Production & Operations, Programming | Creation
Photo
Photo : NFB
Credits
Written and Directed by
Justin Simms
Edited by
Andrew MacCormack
Cinematography
Cody Westman
Andrew MacCormack
Duncan De Young
Marcia Connolly
Original Music composed and performed by
Ian Foster
Sound Design
Paul Steffler
Story Consultant
Wanda Nolan
Produced by
Liz Cowie
Rohan Fernando
Special Thanks
Willow Kean
Jude Simms
Randy Simms
Florence Simms
Dominique Jean, Kai and Jasper
Hasan Hai, Kadin and Finley
Roger Samson, Luke
Additional Cinematography
Lian Morrison
Justin Simms
Location Sound Recording
Don Ellis
Michelle Lacour
Neil McIntyre
Mark Neary
Matthew Thomson
Josh White
Scott Yates
Narrated by
Justin Simms
Off-Camera Performers
Brian Marler
Alison Woolridge
Production Manager
Lynn Andrews
Archival Research
Marika Lapointe
Additional Research
Maxine Krawczyk
Wanda Nolan
Tamara Segura
Kelly Shiers
Transcription
Lisa Clarke
Foley
Hilary Thomson
Foley Recording
Matthew Thomson
Archives
Access Hollywood
Fresh and Fit Podcast
Candace Owens Podcast
CBC Archive Sales
Dominique Jean
Getty Images
Hemmings Films Ltd.
Hasan Hai
The Simms Family
Masculine GG
Newfoundland and Labrador Beard and Moustache Club
National Film Board of Canada
Pond5
Roger Samson
MerB’ys Productions Inc.
Screenocean / Reuters
Thank You
Ricardo Acosta
Millefiore Clarkes
Michael Crummey
Andrea Dorfman
Terry Goldie
Hannele Halm
Dr. Ariel Hannaford
Zaren Healey White
Chris Hogan
Duncan Major
Jamie Miller
George Murray and family
Jan Peterknecht
John Walker
Allison White
Jenny Wright
Production Supervisor
Roz Power
Technical Coordinators
Daniel Lord
Christopher Macintosh
Graphics and Motion Design
Alain Ostiguy
Online Editor
Yannick Carrier
Digital Editing Technicians
Patrick Trahan
Pierre Dupont
Albert Kurian
Re-recording
Isabelle Lussier
Senior Production Coordinator
Sarah MacLeod
Associate Producer
Kelly Davis
Line Producer
Geneviève Duguay
Studio Administrator
Leslie Ann Poyntz
Marketing Manager
Jamie Hammond
Publicist
Jennifer Mair
Marketing Coordinator
Jolène Lessard
Legal Counsel
Peter Kallianiotis
Executive Producers Eastern Documentary Unit
Nathalie Cloutier
Rohan Fernando
John Christou
Annette Clarke
for Jude
A National Film Board of Canada production
Media Relations
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About the NFB
Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of distinctive, engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 6,500 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 11 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.