More than half a century after being forced into foster care, four siblings unite for the first time in the NFB's extraordinary Birth of a Family.

Bring a hankie—really.

Victims of the Canadian government's "Scoop", during which some 20,000 Indigenous children were placed into the child welfare system, Ben, Rose, and Esther all converge for a week in Banff with their long lost sister, Betty Ann, the oldest of the quartet and the focus to some degree of Tasha Hubbard's film.

A reporter for the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Betty Ann seems to have prospered the most of any of them, and had both the drive and one presumes the resources to track down her siblings. This is no small thing. We learn that each of them was shunted between various families—sister Esther ended up in Southern California—in accordance with a policy designed to inhibit any kind of emotional attachment.

Assuming Hubbard's camera doesn't lie, the energy between these four nominal strangers is preternaturally familial, 50-plus years of separation or not, and despite being robbed of, well, pretty much everything. A meeting with an Elder is a touchingly tentative affair. He gently offers a way back for the siblings, who can't even speak their own Dene language. ("We speak White," as Ben puts it.)

There are bumps. Esther in particular finds it hard if not impossible to forgive. Betty Ann looks on with benevolent understanding, but even she admits, in a separate interview, that she'd trade it all, good or bad, for the life she was meant to have.

Birth of a Family screens for free at SFU Woodward’s on Wednesday (January 24), followed by a Q&A with director Tasha Hubbard. More info here.