Land of Destiny (2010)

"What's the difference between wasting a life and spending a life?"

A Canadian musician asks that question in the documentary Land of Destiny. The film spotlights the city of Sarnia, in Ontario, Canada (just east of Port Huron, Michigan) and how the people are shaped by the presence of a chemical factory. The write-up on their website says it best...

Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor - the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. Land of Destiny is a tender portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a devastating investigation into when and for what people fight for.

This documentary falls under the category of poignant and undeniably beautiful. And the soundtrack invokes that tone perfectly.

Official Site: www.bunburyfilms.com