Merging her award-winning eye for documentary with the narrative style of a feature film, Cynthia Scott's Strangers in Good Company (1990) (released as The Company of Strangers in Canada) is exemplary docufiction. It features an all-female cast - a diverse group of seven elderly women who are out on a sightseeing trip. The women use their own names and among them are: 74-year-old Mohawk elder Alice Diabo; 88-year-old American immigrant Constance Garneau; 76-year-old English immigrant Winnie Holden; 76-year-old writer English immigrant Cissy Meddings; 74-year-old writer, painter and out lesbian Mary Meigs; 68-year-old Roman Catholic nun Catherine Roche; and 80-year-old English immigrant Beth Webber. When the tour bus breaks down and their young guide (soul singer Michelle Sweeney) injures her ankle, they are forced to fend for themselves in an isolated cottage on the edge of Quebec. Catherine tries to fix the bus with a nail file and, later, Alice, makes a fish net from a pair of pantyhose. The film is not tightly scripted. The women improvised most of the dialogue themselves, sharing their real-life stories with each other and the camera. The storyline is spliced with girlhood photos of the women as they confess their feelings on aging and mortality - without any precious nostalgia. The interaction between the women is a pleasure to watch. In one fantastic moment, Mary explains to Cissy that she hasn't had a man in life because "you know, I'm a lesbian," to which Cissy replies, "Oh, that's good." And while Constance can no longer hear her travel companions well, let alone a birdsong, a white sparrow answers to her own perfect imitation of its call. After having already won the Academy Award for her short documentary Flamenco at 5:15 (1983), in 1990, Scott's Strangers in Good Company became the highest grossing film the National Film Board of Canada ever produced.

By Rebecca Kumar