Niagara filmmaker goes into the dark for Amazon Prime series
Welland’s Nathalie Bibeau revisits an Oshawa murder for four-part doc
For Welland-born filmmaker Nathalie Bibeau, making a true crime documentary isn’t just about telling a story. It’s about knowing that real people are involved. Real communities.
Bibeau was the same age as Kristen French when the St. Catharines teen was abducted and later killed by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. The case has become Canadian crime folklore in the 30 years since — the subject of books, movies and TV series.
In Niagara, old wounds and fears are reopened every time the story is revisited. And it was constantly on Bibeau’s mind as she revisited a 50year-old Oshawa murder for her new Amazon Prime series “The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith.”
“I thought a lot about (the French) case and also the media circus that enveloped it,” says Bibeau during a Zoom interview. “This case has some parallels in terms of that media circus. There’s been a lot of media over the last 50 years, but no one has ever told it like this. No one has ever strung it together in this way with the access that we had.
“It was an incredible privilege. I don’t say that lightly. I took this job very seriously.”
In 1974, 22-year-old Beverly Lynn Smith was murdered in the kitchen of her Oshawa farmhouse. The case went cold until some remarkable developments 30 years later led to charges against a man named Alan Smith (no relation) who lived across the street.
But nothing about the case is cut and dried — there’s a haymaker of a twist in the first episode — and the story consumed Bibeau for more than a year while she made it.
Though she had delved into difficult subject matter with her awardwinning documentary “The Walrus and the Whistleblower” — about Niagara activist Phil Demers’ ongoing battle against Marineland — this was a whole other level of dark.
“It took over my life for 13 months,” she says. “There are the human tragedies involved in this story that keep you up, there are the unanswered questions, there are the complications and flaws with our justice system.
“There is unrelenting grief that you feel from family members even after 50 years of losing a loved one. It never goes away.”
It led to many sleepless nights for Bibeau, who now lives in Montreal.
Not only was there a fascinating story to tell, but real lives to consider.
“The other thing that keeps you up is the responsibility to do this justice,” she says. “To take an enormous story with so many narrative threads, so many nuances and emotions, and give weight to all the right things.”
The series got its world premiere at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto, which runs from April 28 to May 8, before arriving on Amazon Prime May 6. With millions of potential streamers, it’s Bibeau’s most high-profile project yet.
“I’m much more excited than I am nervous,” she says.
“There was a team of about 200 people who worked on this show under me and with me. I wasn’t the only one to give it my all. There was a small army of people who dedicated their weekends, their evenings, their early mornings to making this happen. And to doing it right.”