How to watch great new Indigenous movies at ImagineNative from anywhere in Canada

The ImagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival is the must-attend fall film festival that's actually accessible to all Canadians — both geographically and financially. It's also the world's largest Indigenous media arts event, celebrating the best in worldwide Indigenous filmmaking.

The in-person festival in Toronto is a unique opportunity to catch visually stunning films on the big screen which may not get a theatrical release. But even if you can't attend the festival in Toronto, you can watch a large selection of the program, including online exclusives, from anywhere in Canada. 

This year's festival includes 14 feature films, 70 short films (across 11 programs), 21 digital + interactive works and 17 audio works. With selections spanning 75 Indigenous Nations, 40 Indigenous languages and 13 countries, the festival is a great way to access films that are unlikely to become widely available across Canada ever again. Most of the Canadian features will eventually arrive on VOD if not theatrically, but the international films and shorts may be hard to access in future. 

Attending ImagineNative has put great films on my radar that I wouldn't have otherwise known about: without a launchpad like TIFF, Indigenous films struggle to get theatrical releases in Canada, and often land on VOD with little fanfare and zero press coverage. ImagineNative's excellent curation is a shortcut to figuring out what films you should be paying attention to, even if you haven't heard of them yet. 

Watching Indigenous films from many nations, inside and outside of Canada, has helped educate me about Indigenous perspectives in Canada and beyond. I've been able to see Indigenous films from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Sweden, and across Canada, which has helped to contextualize Indigenous issues in Canada within a worldwide colonial context. There are striking similarities between the genocide, cultural loss, and ongoing mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples in Canada with other British colonies and beyond. Films made by Indigenous Peoples, like those programmed at ImagineNative, help connect the dots. 

The festival helped put filmmakers on my radar like Australia's Wayne Blair (Top End Wedding, The Sapphires), who appears in this year's The New Boy as an actor, and Mohawk/Heiltsuk filmmaker Zoe Leigh Hopkins, whose 30-something coming-of-ager Run Woman Run (2020) is among my favourite films of the decade so far. I've especially enjoyed checking out the festival's short programs, each totalling around 90 minutes, which offer a multitude of perspectives — across nations, languages, and cultures — on topics ranging from motherhood to the urban-rural duality of contemporary Indigenous people.

ImagineNative has a great track record for programming

Since the festival's inception in 2000, it has screened countless world-renowned Indigenous films from around the world, especially Canada. ImagineNative has played host to Taika Waititi's Boy (Australia, 2010), Mi'gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby's Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Canada, 2013), Inuk filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril's Angry Inuk (2013), Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country (Australia, 2017) and Sámi-Blackfoot filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers' collaboration with Kathleen Hepburn, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Canada, 2019). Plus, the festival has screened pretty much every short and feature by the two most prolific and long-standing Indigenous filmmakers in the country, Alanis Obomsawin and Zacharius Kunuk. 

In addition to these more widely-known titles, ImagineNative also has a great track record of programming excellent under-the-radar films that may skip the showcase of TIFF but are among the best Indigenous films of any given year. For example, the festival has played host to Sonia Boileau's fantastic missing and murdered Indigenous women drama Rustic Oracle (Canada, 2019), Loretta Todd's visually stunning adaptation of Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers' essential documentary about the opioid crisis, Kímmapiiyipitssini:The Meaning of Empathy (Canada, 2019).

How to attend ImagineNative

ImagineNative's in-person program in Toronto runs from October 17–22, and the Canada-wide virtual component runs from October 23–29. While many of the films screening in-person will also screen online, some of the short programs are only available either virtually or in-person, and several features are only screening in-person. The festival is extremely affordable (in-person tickets are $8-10, while online tickets are $6, and $50 gets you an all-access pass), removing the financial barriers that most film festivals still have. In fact, you can even get a whole day of free films on October 20 in Toronto. 

Although there are a few films screening virtually in Ontario only, the vast majority of the online programming is available across Canada, and even worldwide. This means that you can access some of this year's most exciting Indigenous films from almost anywhere.

What to see at ImagineNative this year

Once again, ImagineNative is screening some of the best Indigenous feature films I've personally seen across the festival circuit so far this year, including at TIFF. Two essential Canadian feature films that deal with recovering from trauma are Cree filmmaker Dr. Jules Koostachin's documentary WaaPaKe (Tomorrow) and Inuk filmmakers Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk's Tautuktavuk (What We See). (Both films will screen virtually, though Tautuktavuk is only available in Ontario.)

In WaaPaKe, Koostachin gathers testimonials from her residential school survivor mother, her son Asivak, herself, and two other children of survivors to discuss the legacy of intergenerational trauma from residential schools and how they are all trying to heal and move forward. Equal parts angry and compassionate, these testimonials are deeply personal, often harrowing stories, about being torn from your culture, hurt by your family, and yet feeling deep empathy for those you know were hurt themselves. 

Set during the early COVID-19 pandemic, Tautuktavuk is a deeply moving film that largely consists of a Zoom conversation between two sisters: one is in Montreal accessing domestic abuse counselling that isn't available in the Arctic, while the other is still in Igloolik, dealing with the challenges of further reduced access to social services that happened during the early pandemic. They are both survivors of domestic abuse, but only one is actively in recovery. Communicating digitally allows the women to openly discuss subjects they usually might avoid, but it's also a barrier to fully honest communication about their current circumstances. 

For a more lighthearted break, check out the slacker/gross-out comedy Hey, Viktor!, written, directed by, and starring Cody Lightning playing a version of himself: a 30-something man still living in the glory days of his one role as a child actor in the legendary Indigenous film Smoke Signals. He becomes obsessed with making a sequel to the film and along the way, must learn to grow up and let go of the past.

Among the festival's international films, I recommend filmmaker Erica Tremblay's directorial debut Fancy Dance, which was a highlight of this year's U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. It is still seeking North American distribution and is screening in-person only. The film is the story of a 30-something woman (soon-to-be-Oscar-nominee Lily Gladstone) who sets off on a likely futile journey to find her missing sister at the behest of her niece (Isabel Deroy-Olson). 

Finally, Warwick Thornton's latest film (following his masterpiece Sweet Country), The New Boy — which also has yet to secure a distributor — will be screening for free in-person on October 20. It's essential viewing on the big screen. Thornton is one of the most gifted cinematographers and visual stylists working today; he can tell a story with minimal dialogue through image and sound. Set during WW II, the film stars Cate Blanchett as an unexpectedly kind nun who takes in the eponymous Indigenous boy who was kidnapped by the state, and offers him kindness and care in an environment known for abuse and violence. But colonialism and the church are ever-present and threaten to destroy The New Boy's sense of self and the Indigenous magic he wields.

Ultimately, you can't go wrong with the curation at ImagineNative. Every film is a window into a different nation, language, and culture. No matter where you're watching from, these films will open your eyes, give you important food for thought, and connect you to some of the best filmmaking out there.