Canada’s Indigenous Filmmakers Build on Success With More Films and Visibility at Toronto Festival
variety.comJennie Punter Indigenous filmmakers continue to make strides in Canada, building industry capacity on their own terms and telling stories that both honor their communities and reach out to global audiences.
Toronto’s 2023 slate offers audiences and buyers vital, provocative, and — because we need it — hilarious world-premiering work from established creators and up-and-comers. “Tautuktavuk (What We See)” is the latest from Isuma, the collective of Inuit-owned media companies best-known for Camera d’Or-winning “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner” (2001). “Tautuktavuk” is written and directed by film veterans Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who also play sisters helping each other heal from past and present trauma. “Originally we were to be face-to-face in the same house,” Tulugarjuk, who is based in Montreal, tells Variety. “I was supposed to film in Igloolik (in Nunavut) over three seasons but when COVID hit, the world locked down.
We had to put that reality — the southern pandemic versus the Arctic pandemic— in the film.” With pandemic radio updates in the background, the sisters videochat about their daily lives and experiences of domestic abuse.
The healing power of community is shown in scenes — hunting and distributing of community food, traditional songs sung in Inuktitut, drum-dancing — that blend reality and fiction. “When I was a child, it was rare to see drum-dancing because it was banned [by colonial entities], but my father kept the tradition, thank goodness,” Tulugarjuk says. “If we are bringing our identity and strength into this film, there has to be drum-dancing and songs.” Isuma Distribution Intl.
