What does it mean to be well, for men, when the world narrows the definition of masculinity?
A while ago, I was invited by Sue Biely with Story Money Impact to attend a VIFF screening of We Will Be Brave and share my thoughts. This documentary follows The Good Guise—an arts-based collective of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, racialized men, and non-binary people in Toronto exploring their relationships to masculinity, healing, and community through transformative justice and abolition principles.
I left with a deeper understanding of their distinct experiences and renewed reflection on the value of healing in community. While I don't share their specific lived experiences, witnessing this work reminded me how necessary it is to protect environments that hold space for communal repair and connection. These spaces don't only serve those who gather within them—they ripple outward, challenging rigidities that impact all of us.
We Will Be Brave opens conversations about the range of masculine expression through the group's curiosities, looking beyond the boxes many men inherit. This community explores vulnerability, positionality, and identity together, confronting inherited narratives, survival strategies, and how society punishes men for emotional forms of expression.
What stuck with me:
Healing is communal work, not something that solely needs to be figured out in solitude or limited to only conventional therapeutic models. Reimagining strength through interdependence, not isolation.
Masculinity isn't monolithic; the film touches on the spectrum and impact of rigidity.
The magic happens in spaces where creativity and vulnerability merge.
The documentary brought to mind My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem, which explores healing from racialized trauma through embodied practice and community intention. In parallel ways, We Will Be Brave documents a group courageously doing both inner and systemic work essential for the future. It's relational work, expressed through creativity, intentionality, and shared accountability.
This film traces the journeys of individuals courageous enough to arrive where they are, embracing the journey beyond binary forms of healing because life doesn't exist in binaries—it exists in the in-between. It's about showing up for the work, space holding for one another, and tending to environments where care and responsibility co-exist, especially for those whose healing has historically been denied and under-resourced.
More than anything, We Will Be Brave reveals the transformative power of community and creative expression as tools for liberation, modeled by this community. It’s a reminder that we don’t need to heal alone—and that our collective futures rely on the spaces we choose to imagine, build, and sustain together. Witnessing this work, even as someone outside its centre, had me reflecting on the structures we uphold, the spaces we nurture, and the type of world we decide to shape.