Audience Choice Awards

Living in Toronto and seeking reconnection with his Métis roots, Trevor Cameron sets out on a cross-country road trip to the homelands of Gabriel Dumont, hero and leader of the 1885 Métis uprising. In a ramshackle van painted with Métis iconography, Cameron blends animation, personal narrative and historical facts visiting the places and people who can offer profound insight into Dumont. While textbooks may offer us a glimpse of who this important figure was, Shadow of Dumont explores Gabriel Dumont through kinship, humour, and a deep connection to the landscape.

Director: Trevor Cameron – Métis
Canada | 2020 | 88 min
English | Documentary Feature
Canadian Premiere

Trevor Cameron is an award-winning Métis writer and director whose films  have been screened internationally. His interest in telling Métis-specific stories offers a distinct voice and perspective in Canadian arts.

Preceded by They Came On Ships!
Director: Erik Sanchez – Shoalwater Bay/Chinook/Mexican

Live Q&A
October 21st – 3:00PM

Content Warning: None

Supported by:

With a deeply moving performance from Nêhiyaw actor Justin Rain, Jessie Anthony’s first feature film offers a timely story of the ramifications of cultural loss and disconnection. Jon is a young Indigenous man struggling to keep it together as addiction and the pain of intergenerational trauma engulfs him. Brother, I Cry looks at the ways in which Indigenous families love and heal through spiritual and cultural practices.

Director: Jessie Anthony – Onondaga Nation
Canada | 2020 | 96 min
English | Dramatic Feature
World Premiere

Jessie Anthony is a proud Haudenosaunee woman from the Onondaga Nation, Beaver clan, born and raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.

Live Q&A
October 21st – 2:00PM

Content Warning: Violence, criminal activity, sexual activity or adult themes, Course Language

Supported by:

Determined to outrun her powers, Lisa Hill leaves her Haisla village of Kitamaat for the city and a life of partying—until her dead cousin’s plea sends her home. Lisa returns to her parents’ home where she is confronted by a long ignored but powerful connection to the supernatural world that surrounds her. Upon her return, Lisa has a vision of her younger brother Jimmy drowning. Jimmy reassures Lisa he’s safe. But then Jimmy, who goes out to sea in Uncle Josh’s fishing boat, goes missing. Jimmy wasn’t interested in fishing—he was out to rid the village of Josh, a predator who abused many women in the village. Lisa sets out on a harrowing journey to the Land of the Dead to save Jimmy’s life or at least his soul. Based on the novel Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson which was awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction prize in 2001.

Director: Loretta Todd – Cree/Métis
Canada | 2020 | 103 min
English | Dramatic Feature
Ontario Premiere

Loretta Todd—Female. Cree. Métis. White. Writes. Directs. Thinks. Produces. She challenges herself and others and makes things happen. Known for lyrical, expressionistic imagery combined with strong storytelling skills, Todd tells truths that are haunting, funny and real.

Preceded by Naja (Little Sister)
Director: Marc Fussing Rosbach – Inuk

Live Q&A
October 22nd – 2:00PM

Access Available: Canada
Content Warning: Mature audience

Supported by:

Land as ceremony, the body as memory and language as futurity. Małni is a poetic journey revealing notions of circular wayfinding within Chinookan origins stories. This film follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier as they contemplate separately the fluidity around afterlife, rebirth and the space between. The cadence of Hopinka’s visuals and the presence of the Chinuk Wawa language fill the screen turning the viewer towards the story, inwards. The narrative speaks to gestures and actions that speak to active participation and collective responsibility from the positions of self to the collective.

Director: Sky Hopinka – Ho-Chunk Nation
USA | 2020 | 80 min
Chinuk Wawa/English | Documentary Feature

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) is an artist, filmmaker, cofounder of COUSIN Collective and an educator. His video, photo and text work centres around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape and designs of language as containers of culture, through personal, documentary and non-fiction forms of media.

Live Q&A
October 22nd – 3:00PM

Access Available: Ontario
Content Warning: None

The Legend of Baron To’a tells the story of Fritz, a Tongan entrepreneur, who after several years returns to his old neighbourhood to sell his family’s home, still grappling with his wrestling superstar father, Baron To’a’s, legacy. While trying to ignore his ties to his family and neighbourhood, he inadvertently causes the theft of his late father’s valued pro wrestling title belt by some ruthless gangsters led by “man-mountain” Tahu. When negotiation and diplomacy fail to get it back, Fritz is forced to embrace his father’s legacy to reclaim the title. Full of fast action, humour and heart with a super talented Pasifika and Māori cast.

Director:Kiel McNaughton – Māori/Pasifika
Producer: Owen Black (Māori/Pasifika), Kerry Warkia (Māori/Pasifika)
Writer: John Argall (Māori/Pasifika), Owen Black (Māori/Pasifika)
New Zealand | 2020 | 103 min
English ǀ Dramatic Feature
Ontario Premiere

Manurewa-bred Kiel McNaughton’s extensive work ranges from acting and writing to producing and directing. McNaughton, along with his wife, Kerry Warkia, have produced the anthology movies Waru and Vai, which were shot across the Pacific. This is McNaughton’s debut as a feature film director.

Perceded by Atua
Director: Brown Bitty (Muaupoko, Ngai Tara, Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Huia), Chantelle Murray (Bardi), Bailey Poching (Ngati Whatua, Samoan of Aleisa and Tanugamanono)

Live Q&A
October 23rd — 2:00PM

Access Available: Canada
Content Warning: 14A – Violence, Coarse Language

Supported by:

Gukki Nuka (53) is an artist returning to the hometown where he was sexually abused as a child. Kornelia (24) is working with her psychologist to break the grip of her anxiety caused by her childhood abuse. While following these two personal stories, Pilluarneq Ersigiunnaarpara examines the wider social context and implications of sexual abuse, seeking to understand the detrimental issue in the context of Greenland. Their strength is within their voice. Community, family, land and healing are part of their journey.

Director/Producer: Nivi Pedersen – Inuk/Greenlandic
Greenland/Denmark | 2019 | 70 min
Greenlandic/Danish w/ English Subtitles ǀ Documentary Feature
North American Premiere

Nivi Pedersen is a Greenlandic filmmaker working from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Wanting to portray different aspects of Greenland and the Greenlandic culture for both national and international audiences Nivi started Nivaara Films in 2017.

Live Q&A
October 23rd – 3:00PM

Access Available: North America
Content Warning: Mature audience

Based on real events, Kvrvf Nawel’s film recounts the tale of a tenant farming community in revolt in the province of Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador. Exploited into debt by a corrupt landowner and despot, the peasants look for options to get out of this scheme and take back the land they till, the land that is rightfully theirs. Together they paralyze the local and national economy, forcing their voices to be heard in a process that alters their personal history and that of the entire country. From the seeds these men and women dare to plant, a brave and necessary rebellion of collective struggle is born.

Director: Kvrvf Nawel – Mapuche
Producers: Eliana Champutiz  – Kichwa Pasto, David Hernandez – Wayuu
Ecuador | 2020 | 76 min
Spanish w/ English Subtitles ǀ Dramatic Feature
International Premiere

Kvrvf Nawel is a screenwriter, audiovisual creator and musician. Since 2000 he has been linked to audiovisual creation for the strengthening of Native, Afrodescendant  and Peasant Peoples of Latin America. He has extensive experience in teaching workshops, film training and audiovisual creation spaces in rural communities in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico.

Live Q&A
October 25th – 3:00PM

Content Warning: Contains some violence and is intended for an adult audience

Over the course of a year, filmmaker Sterlin Harjo followed a set of Native artists across various practices to propose a simple, yet loaded question: Who classifies Native American art and what does that mean? Among those profiled are musician and composer Laura Ortman, who performed at the 2019 Whitney Biennial; artist and composer Raven Chacon; famed poet, musician and author Joy Harjo; singer and guitarist Micah P. Hinson; multidisciplinary artist and musician Nicholas Galanin; and Bobby “Dues” Wilson, co-creator of the famed comedy group The 1491s. Within their musings and work, Harjo constructs a gentle portrait of creatives asking what it means to push boundaries while also creating work reflective of their own identities as it relates to their own experiences.

Director:Sterlin Harjo – Seminole/Muscogee Creek
USA | 2020 | 93 min
English ǀ Documentary Feature

Sterlin Harjo is an award-winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary. Harjo is a founding member of a five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Harjo is currently in development on Reservation Dogs, a new FX series that he created with Taika Waititi.

Preceded by RKLSS
Director:Tank Standing Buffalo – Potowatami/Métis/Black

Live Q&A
October 24th – 3:00PM

Access Available: Canada
Content Warning: Contains some nudity

Supported by:

“Indian” mythology unwound into truth-telling, Inconvenient Indian proves you can never get too comfortable with the past. This urgent documentary by Michelle Latimer is an intellectual inquiry into Indigenous master storyteller Thomas King’s bestselling book The Inconvenient Indian. Return the gift of having come through the mechanisms of colonization, loss and injustice as an opportunity to reveal resilience, thrivance, love and hope. Shifting from subjectivity to mobilization of momentous change this feature anchors notions of Indigenous futurity in the voices of artists, filmmakers, activists and educators subverting the “inconvenience” of their existence into embodied practices of sovereignty and continuums.

Director: Michelle Latimer – Métis/Algonquin
Producer: Jesse Wente – Anishinaabe
Canada | 2020 | 90 min
English, Inuktitut, Cree, and Anishinaabemowin ǀ Documentary Feature

Award-winning filmmaker, producer, writer and activist, Michelle Latimer is dedicated to the pursuit of Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Currently she is showrunning and directing the scripted series Trickster. In 2020, Michelle was named the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs and was awarded the Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Award, a prize given to five international filmmakers for their work in social-justice filmmaking. She splits her time between Toronto and Treaty 9 Territory in Northern Ontario, Canada.

Live Q&A
October 25th – 2:00PM

Access Available: Canada
Content Warning: 13+

Supported by:

Lending to genres of documentary, experimental, and visual poetry, Compañía stretches notions of Indigenous Cinema. A journey begins. The cadence sets the tone for reflective introspection. The daily rhythms of a small mountain community fade in and out of time. With a call to return, we witness community members from the city to honour the dead. Along the path, dreams and memories transform themselves into non-linear way-finding, giving way to contemplative quiet and the cyclical nature of life. From the individual to the community, the land to urban spaces, traditional to ancestral, Compañía is a call to witness the fullness of what has been carried and what has survived. Through the perspective of the community, Miguel Hilari deepens the understanding of perspectives on home and migration.

Director: Miguel Hilari – Aymara/German
Bolivia | 2019 | 60 min
Spanish/Aymara/Quechua w/ English Subtitles ǀ Documentary Feature

Based in La Paz, Bolivia, Miguel Hilari is an award-winning filmmaker who is interested in memory, migration, colonial history and labour. His films have screened at Cinéma du Réel, CPH:DOX, Oberhausen, Images, Lincoln Center and Valdivia. He co-organized Festival de Cine Radical, a showcase for new cinema, for several years. Hilari leads a project that facilitates sound and image workshops in rural communities.

Live Q&A
October 25th – 8:30PM

Content Warning: None

Supported by: