News

June is National Indigenous History Month, and there’s no better time to enjoy some Indigenous-made entertainment.

Check out these recommendations of some of the top movies from a new generation of Indigenous filmmakers and actors who tell their own stories — their way.

Read More: Et Canada Honours National Day Of Truth And Reconciliation With ‘Indigenous Artists & Icons’

“Atanarjuat the Fast Runner”

Directed by by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, this 2001 drama was the first feature film in history to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language.

According to Kunuk, this screen adaptation of an ancient Inuit legend “demystifies the exotic, otherwordly aboriginal stereotype by telling a universal story.”

“Before Tomorrow”

Adapted from a Danish novel, this 2008 feature from directors Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu is the first feature film to be made by Arnait Video Productions, a women’s Inuit film collective.

Set in a small Inuit...

Set in Nova Scotia, Bretten Hannam’s tremendously shot film follows two boys as they flee their abusive dad and embark upon a quest

Bretten Hannam’s road-trip quest is an essay in indigenous and queer identities set among the Mi’kmaw people of Nova Scotia: it’s a sometimes pious movie with rather ostentatiously beautiful imagery whose violent plot transitions in the opening act are a little forced. Yet there is an open-heartedness and gentleness in it, and a sense of style and place that reaches back to Malick and arguably even Mark Twain.

Link (Phillip Lewitski) and his younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony) live with their brutal and abusive white dad: mixed-race Link has dyed his hair blond, evidently in a confused attempt to deny his ancestry. He has always been told that his Native American mother is dead, but when he finds out that she may in...

"She ran away... Why didn't she take me with her?" Peccadillo Pictures from the UK has revealed a new official UK trailer for an indie film titled Wildhood from Canada, which is already out on VOD in the US. It's opening in the UK this September and we never posted the trailer for it, so why not feature this now - because it looks very good. This premiered at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival last year. Two brothers – Link and Travis – embark on a journey to find their birth mother after their abusive father had lied for years about her whereabouts; along the way, they reconnect with their own Indigenous heritage and make a new friend. As a close bond begins to form between Link and Pasmay, Link learns to come to terms with his own complex heritage, identity and sexuality. Starring Phillip Lewitski, Joshua Odjick, Michael Greyeyes, Steve Lund, Joel Thomas Hynes,...

Phillip Lewitski, Avery Winters-Anthony and Joshua Odjick in Wildhood Photo: Riley Smith

It’s one of the most enjoyable outsider films of the year, a film which has done the rounds of festivals like BFI Flare and Inside Out and is now screening on Hulu. Ten years in the making, Bretten Hannam’s Wildhood tells the story of half Mi’kmaw teenager Link (Phillip Lewitski) growing up with his abusive white father and deciding to run away after he learns that his mother didn’t die after all and has sent him lots of letters which his father hid. Not really knowing where to find her, and with his young half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony) in tow, he’s lucky to get help from two-spirit travelling performer Pasmay (Joshua Odjick). As Link learns more about what it means to be Mi’kmaw and reconnects with his roots, he and Pasmay begin falling for one another,...

How do you find yourself while running away from who you are? That’s the essential question at the heart of “Wildhood,” the impressive sophomore feature from Two Spirit L’nu filmmaker Bretten Hannam. Enlivened by elegant handheld cinematography and a galvanizing breakout performance from Phillip Lewitski, “Wildhood” is a beautiful testament to the power of authentic storytelling.

Filmed in English and Mi’kmaw, the film shares the Mi’kmaw culture with the greater world through the eyes of a wayward youth in search of his estranged mother. As he thrashes through the landscape with wild abandon, he slowly softens to the kind strangers he meets along the way, discovering himself with the gentle guidance of his people. It’s

“Wildhood” opens with Lincoln, or Link (Lewitski), hunched over as his little brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony) scrubs bleach into his hair in their modest trailer home. Stretching lithely in the mirror,...

This review of “Wildhood” was first published July 17, 2022, before its opening in Los Angeles.

Rather than a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age road trip, “Wildhood” is a young protagonist’s quest to bring harmony to the intersections of his identity. From writer-director Bretten Hannam — a Two-Spirit, non-binary individual — the wandering drama unfolds across the Mi’kmaq people’s territory in the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada.

To examine the queer experience through the lens of indigenous youth, Hannam centers on Lincoln, aka Link (Phillip Lewitski), a mixed-race teen who dyes his hair blond and doesn’t speak Mi’kmaq, the language of his mother’s people. On many fronts, he doesn’t truly know who he is yet. But the key to attaining some clarity, he finds out, has long been denied to him.

Link’s abusive and homophobic father kept secret the letters his mother sent him over the years. The realization that she didn’t die,...

It’s a problem faced by mixed-race people all over the world, especially in youth: all of the racism, a lot less by way of community support. Link (Philip Lewitski) lives with his white father (Joel Thomas Hynes) and white half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony). his mother is long gone. his father beats him, and it’s getting worse because he’s finding it harder to hide the fact that he is two-spirit. When he and Travis are arrested for trying to scavenge scrap metal from an abandoned factory, he’s beaten unconscious by the police, and he knows that when he gets home, his father will add to the damage. Desperate, he searches through his father’s room for a means of resistance or escape, and finds, instead, a box of letters from his mother. His father has lied to him. She’s still alive, and has been writing to him all these years.

Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has acquired Bretten Hannam’s drama “Wildhood,” which world premieres in the Discovery section of Toronto Film Festival. The Canadian film stars Philip Lewitski, Joshua Odjick and Avery Winters-Anthony.

Gabor Greiner, COO of Films Boutique, said: “ ‘Wildhood’ is an amazing film for many reasons — besides coming from a Mi’kmaw director it is a queer/Two-Spirited Indigenous film introducing two very talented young First Nations actors. The film strikes not only through its beautiful cinematography and wild locations but with its attaching and emotional story of friendship, love and belonging – and an incredible soundtrack and pow wow dance.”

In the film, when Link discovers his Mi’kmaw mother is still alive, he runs away from home with his younger brother Travis, in a desperate gamble to start a new life. They’re soon joined by Pasmay, a pow wow dancer drawn to Link’s story.