The standard of excellence the Vancouver Film School instills in its students never ceases to amaze me – in live-action shorts, animated films and video art. We can now add documentaries to that list, judging by this sensitive and in-depth look at a teenage stutterer.

The causes of stuttering are mostly unknown, and it usually appears suddenly in early childhood. Hannah Seaman became a stutterer overnight, when her family moved to a new town and she found she had trouble expressing herself among her peers. The filmmakers never condescend to Hannah as she talks about her experiences, struggling to produce words that don’t want to come out in front of the camera. They’re clearly on her side, and it’s heartbreaking as she recounts an incident at work when a customer mimicked her and made fun of her speech disorder.

What’s remarkable about Hannah’s story is that she’s involved in theater at her school, and on stage the stuttering goes away. I wish the filmmakers would have made a bigger deal of this. It should have been the centerpiece of the film, but instead we see only a brief glimpse of Hannah rehearsing a scene. To see her act out a whole scene while making no mistakes would have been really powerful.

The rest of the film is very well executed. Editor Raymund Santos and DP Shane Smith keep things fluid and visually appealing, and director Bruce Oothout has clearly done his homework, filling in not just the micro details of Hannah’s life but also the macro details of the disease itself. An important story, engagingly told.