Roger, My Brother

Memory fades. The bond holds

Roger, My Brother is an intimate black-and-white documentary from Canada that observes the daily reality of home caregiving with patience and precision. It has won the Best Director prize at two international festivals and screened at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal.

What Roger, My Brother is about

The film centres on Christiane, a woman in her seventies who provides full-time care for her elder brother Roger, who lives with a neurocognitive disorder. Rather than pursue institutionalisation, she brings him into her home and attends to every aspect of his daily life: meals, hygiene, the small rituals that preserve his sense of self. Director Jean-Vital Joliat filmed the pair over an extended period, working with a small camera at Christiane's request, then spent years editing the footage into a 88-minute feature.

The film's approach is observational: no narration, no reconstruction. It rests on gesture, silence, and the texture of shared domestic time, exploring what it means to accompany someone as memory recedes while the bond between two people remains.

Director of Roger, My Brother

Jean-Vital Joliat is a Franco-Swiss-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. He studied cinema at the IAD in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, with a focus on editing, and has since worked across short film, music video, and commercial production. Roger, My Brother is his first feature-length documentary. Joliat began filming the material in 2014 and completed the edit a decade later, citing the need for greater personal and professional distance from the subject before he could shape it into a film.

Awards and festivals: Roger, My Brother

Roger, My Brother has received recognition at festivals across four continents. It won Best Director at CineFest São Jorge (Brazil) and Best Director Feature Film at the Greenflash International Film Festival (France). It received an Honorable Mention at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival and official selections at Delémont-Hollywood (Switzerland), Lift-Off Global Network (United Kingdom), and the Stockholm City Film Festival (Sweden).

Where Roger, My Brother is set

The film was shot in Alsace, France, at the home where Christiane and Roger lived together during the caregiving period. The production is Canadian, made by Montreal-based JV Films, and the dialogue is in French and Alsatian, with English and French subtitles available. It belongs to a strand of family documentary and health documentary filmmaking concerned with ageing, dementia, and the domestic realities of home care.

Related documentaries on GuideDoc

If Roger, My Brother appeals to you, GuideDoc streams several other documentaries exploring family bonds, memory, and personal resilience. At the Feet of My Mother is a close portrait of an intimate family relationship, while Bigger than Trauma examines how individuals and families navigate lasting difficulty. The Punk of Natashquan offers another character-driven portrait rooted in a specific place and community.

Where to watch Roger, My Brother online

Roger, My Brother streams exclusively on GuideDoc, a platform dedicated entirely to documentary film. It is available to watch online now. GuideDoc offers a curated library of documentaries spanning health, family, society, and the arts, accessible worldwide.