Experience Indigenous films from the circumpolar North, Outdoors in a theatre made of snow!

 Glenn Gear • 2021 • 2 min. • Canada • No Dialogue

In the context of his mothers passing, and the pandemic, this animation is a love letter to Gear's mother and to the sea and sky in Newfoundland, from Corner Brook to Bottle Cove.  It reflects an uneasy longing to connect not only to people, but to the land, rocks, and water.  Glenn Gear is an artist from Newfoundland now based in Montreal, QC.  Gear finds inspiration by exploring his identity as an urban Inuk with ancestral ties to Nunatsiavut. 

Darcy Tara McDiarmid & Chantal Rousseau • 2023 • 4 min • Canada • English • No dialogue

This animation is inspired by ancient Indigenous knowledge and traditional practices, and features fish, birds, and animals majestically traversing a dreamlike night-time landscape in the Yukon under starlight. Darcy Tara McDiarmid is a Hän and Northern Tutchone artist from the crow clan.  Chantal Rousseau is a queer settler artist from French Canadian and Ukrainian ancestry.

Ulivia Uviluk • 2020 • 10 min. • Quebec • English, Inuktitut, & French

 While searching online for Inuktitut learning resources, Montreal-based filmmaker Ulivia Uvilik shares a video-call with two young women of her own generation — one in Greenland, the other in Nunavik — who, like her, hope to master their own mother tongues.

Eric Janvier • 2022 • 20 min. • Canada • English

In the Northern Alberta community of Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation, a father teaches his child how to create a caribou drum. In Heartbeat of a Nation, a short documentary by Eric Janvier, cultural reclamation and traditional knowledge are celebrated and passed down from one generation to the next, inspiring renewed hope for the future.

Alsi Telenguy • 2023 • 9 min. • Canada/Siberia • Buryat & Eng. Subtitles

The formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined with hand-painted animation and found objects, featuring the voice of an Indigenous woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat language (a Mongolian dialect).  Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian roots, living between Berlin, Germany and Tiohtià:ke/ Montréal, Canada.

Siku Allooloo • 2022 • 7.5 min. • Canada • English

A connection to my mother in the spirit world activates Taíno culture and presence, revealing a realm unseen. Super 8 film developed with plant medicines connect earth to cosmos as flowers portray family love and ancestral sovereignty extending into the future.  Siku Allooloo is an Inuk/Haitian/Taíno filmmaker as well as an interdisciplinary artist, writer, poet, and community builder. Born and raised in Yellowknife, NWT (Canada) by way of Haïti and Mittimatalik, Nunavut.

Taqralik Partridge & Megan Kyak-Monteith, 2023 • 8 min • Canada • English

This animated short paints a mosaic of Taqralik Patridge’s childhood memories and the loss of her grandmother’s Scottish Gaelic and her father’s Inuktitut languages that English had caused.  Producer(s):

Christa Couture, Michelle St. John

Amanda Strong • 18 min, • 2024 • Canada • English and Dene

Two lifetimes from now the world hangs in the balance. Dove, a young, enigmatic, gender-shifting warrior, discovers the gifts and burdens of their Inkwo (medicine) to defend against an army of hungry, ferocious monsters. Dove’s courage, resilience and alliance with the Earth culminates in a battle against these flesh-consuming creatures, who become stronger with each body and soul they devour.  This film is a call to action to fight and protect against the forces of greed around us.   Writer: Richard Van Camp, Tłı̨chǫ Dene from Fort Smith, NWT.

ISUMA, Norman Cohn and Zacharias Kunuk
1999, 51:00 minutes, colour, Inuktitut w English subtitles

Rapid change from traditional to modern life in Nunavut, like many post-colonial societies, has concentrated power, wealth and information in a few hands. Far-reaching decisions are being made daily by a mostly-unelected political elite with minimal input from under-informed citizens scattered over enormous distances.

With no elected legislature in place until April 1999, Inuit organizations and their government advisors made these decisions on trust. 'Soft' media coverage is provided by these same insiders themselves: government agencies like CBC radio/TV and Goverment of NWT Information Networks, or the Inuit establishment through politically-controlled sources like IBC and TVNC. The absence of independent Inuit media scrutiny means there is little criticism or public debate about these important decisions.

Nipi examines fundamental questions of democracy, power and change in Nunavut and indirectly in Canada itself: in education, religion, gender, lifestyle, the distribution of economic development and the make-up and inner structure of the new leadership class.

ISUMA, Zacharias Kunuk, Neil Diamond and Zacharias Kunuk
2013, 46:34 minutes, colour, Inuktitut and Cree with English subtitles

In the documentary film Inuit Cree Reconciliation, Zacharias Kunuk and Neil Diamond team up to research the events and historical impacts of an 18th century war between Inuit and Cree in Northern Québec. Following the Peace Celebration Event held at Nastapoka River in Nunavik by a small group of Inuit and Cree in the summer of 2011, Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit) and Neil Diamond (Cree) - two of Canada's most respected filmmakers - interview Inuit and Cree Elders in the side-by-side communities of Kuujjuarapik and Whapmagootsui in an attempt to better understand the long and bloody conflict between the two nations and its impact on people today.