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Explore stories about marginalized groups and the pursuit of a more fair society.

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E131: Remembering Jeff Barnaby

This podcast episode pays tribute to the great films and enormous impact of Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby who passed away on October 13, 2022. He directed two landmark Indigenous feature films out of Canada: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and Blood Quantum (2019).

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Feature image for the Jeff Barnaby podcast: in memorial. Still of Mi'gmaq director Jeff Barnaby, a middle-aged Indigenous man with shaved black hair, in a red and black baseball shirt with a red "Indian" cartoon on it.
Mi’gmaq director Jeff Barnaby (pictured) is the subject of this in memorial podcast episode.

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About the episode

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby passed away unexpectedly from cancer on October 13, 2022. He was only 46. He is best known as the writer-director of two feature films in colonial Canada: the landmark film about residential “schools” Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and the popular zombie film Blood Quantum (2019). But he has also made three excellent shorts, which we hope to help people discover: From Cherry English (2004), The Colony (2007), and Etlinisigu’niet: Bleed Down (2015).

We’ve been huge fans of Barnaby’s work and activism, and are still very much mourning the loss of this incredible talent who wasn’t given the opportunities he deserved. There are so many films we will never get from him now. But we also wanted to talk about how many roadblocks were put in Barnaby’s way while he was alive, preventing him from making all the films he could have and wanted to make in his time.

This episode is a tribute to Jeff Barnaby — a complicated, difficult, visionary filmmaker — and what his work has revealed about Canada and the film industry. When Barnaby died, we didn’t just lose so much future work from this important filmmaker that we all wanted to see (and he wanted to make), but we also lost a huge resource of cultural knowledge of the Canadian and Indigenous Film Industries.

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, as well as Associate Editor Dr. Brett Pardy.

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On the podcast episode Remembering Jeff Barnaby

  • 01:51–3:45 Why are we talking about Jeff Barnaby?

Jeff Barnaby’s accomplishments

  • 3:45–6:26 Jeff Barnaby’s unexpected passing and his huge impact on the film industry
  • 6:26–10:38 Barnaby not only changed filmmaking but effected social change with his work
  • 10:38–16:56 How the Canadian film funding bodies failed to support Barnaby’s work in the ways it should have. We also discuss why they wanted to fund Rhymes for Young Ghouls but not Blood Quantum
  • 16:56–19:44 Making films about colonial trauma without showing gratuitous violence or making trauma porn at the same time
  • 19:44– 24:52 Dr. Brett Pardy on teaching Rhymes for Young Ghouls and its weighty emotional impact on the viewer. We also discuss Barnaby’s use of genre to capture a settler audience and talk about colonialism. Barnaby did this without being didactic or preach. He’s not there to teach; just to provoke.
  • 24:52-30:21 Rhymes for Young Ghouls is so accomplished it doesn’t feel like a first feature.

How Jeff Barnaby’s experiences reflected the problems with the Canadian film industry

  • 30:21-32:08 Barnaby wasn’t given the opportunities he should have been given in the time that he had, even though everyone in the Canadian film industry knew how talented he was and how important his work was.
  • 32:08-47:58 How Jeff Barnaby was refreshingly honest on Twitter and in interviews when discussing the realities of being an Indigenous filmmaker. Barnaby had a lot of integrity. He also worked to uplift other Indigenous artists. He was one of the most accessible filmmakers on Twitter and would regularly engage (positively) with other film fans and critics.
  • 47:21-49:24 The loss of Barnaby also means the loss of a huge body of knowledge of how the Canadian film industry works to support (or fail to support) Indigenous filmmakers.
  • 49:24-52:54 The lack of critical or academic interest in contemporary Canadian film, let alone Indigenous film, and how we have tried our best to fill the gap.
  • 52:54-57:13 Jeff Barnaby’s short films, as well as why they are worth catching up with
  • 57:13-59:31 Related episodes, what’s coming next on the podcast, and other wrap-up thoughts.

Show Notes on the podcast on remembering Jeff Barnaby

Related episodes

  • Bonus 27: Empathy on film with Dr. Brett Pardy (FREE to everyone) – Dr. Pardy did his PhD research on how films can create empathy, and used Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls as a case study for some of his on-the-ground research.
  • Ep. 39: Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls & Blood Quantum (Members only) – In this early episode of the podcast, we compare and contrast Barnaby’s two features, as well as discuss how he uses genre in innovative ways, and more.
  • Ep. 62: Indigenous YA, part 1 (Members Only) – We discuss three recent contemporary Indigenous YA films from Canada: Beans (2020), Monkey Beach (2020), and the TV show Trickster (2020).
  • Ep. 63: Indigenous YA, part 2 (Members only) – A broader survey of Indigenous YA out of Canada from the last decade, including Rustic Oracle (2019), Tia and Piujuk (2018), The Grizzlies (2018), Kuessipan (2019), and Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013).
The cover of the Canadian Cinema Yearbook which contains interviews with other great Indigenous filmmakers besides Jeff Barnaby whom we discuss on the podcast.

Discover more great films from Canada, including great Indigenous films

2018-2019 was one of the best years for Canadian cinema in history. Discover these great films through conversations with the filmmakers, guided by the Seventh Row editors in our inaugural annual book, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook.

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Episode (excerpt) transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode is AI-generated by Otter.ai.

[fusebox_transcript]

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Quick thoughts on Mija: What does the American Dream mean to immigrant families?

In Mija, director Isabel Castro follows young Mexican-American music manager Doris Muñoz, as she rebuilds her career.

Read all our Sundance coverage so far.

A still from Mija, in which a young woman, Doris, sings her heart out, bathed in deep blue light. Next to the still is a purple box featuring white text, which reads, 'Quick thoughts.'
Mija Sundance review: What does the American Dream mean to immigrant families?

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Mija, directed by Isabel Castro, is a poignant and beautifully shot character study documentary about what the American Dream means to many immigrant families. The idea of a film about ‘The American Dream’ often makes me gag, because so many films accept the idea uncritically (the exceptions, such as Kelly Reichardt’s work, are a small handful). Mija is more realistic, if still invested in the hopes and dreams of its protagonists. Castro is also interested in what happens after you’ve achieved meteoric success… but then you lose it, and you don’t have a cushy safety net to fall back on.

Doris Muñoz is our heroine, a twenty-seven year old Mexican-American woman who, several years ago, became the music manager of the singer Cuco and helped him to become an immensely popular artist. Doris gained both professional and financial success along with Cuco, raising enough money to help her immigrant parents apply for a green card (Doris is the only one of her family born in America, while her parents are undocumented). When Castro set out to make the film, it was initially going to be about Cuco, but as soon as she met Doris, she switched focus. Then, shortly after filming began, Doris and Cuco suddenly parted ways, right as the pandemic hit. Doris was unemployed and back to square one, searching for a new talent who might be the ticket to the top just like Cuco was.

A still from Mija, in which singer Jacks Haupt poses for a photo in red lighting, heavily made up and elaborately costumed.
Jacks Haupt in Mija, directed by Isabel Castro.

Doris is a protagonist whom you can’t help but love and root for. She’s ambitious but she also has integrity, intent on using her skills to lift up Mexican-American artists. Partway through, Castro introduces a second protagonist in addition to Doris, Jacks Haupt, Doris’s new find, who faces her own struggles with the pressure to succeed as a child of immigrants. As dual protagonists, Doris and Jacks are two women at different stages of similar journeys. At twenty-seven, Doris already has career ups and downs behind her, and she’s also toward the end of the journey of helping her parents get green cards. Jacks, at twenty one, is at the beginning of that same process. She also faces pushback from her parents for pursuing music, as they insist that it’s a frivolous and unsustainable career. Both young women are trying to achieve their dreams while also helping to fulfil the dreams their parents had when they came to America. Castro shows how Doris and Jacks shoulder this heavy burden, and how the older Doris tries to help Jacks through it.

Two young Mexican-American women, Jacks and Doris, lie down on a multicoloured picnic blanket. Jacks stares at the sky while Doris stares as Jacks.
Jacks Haupt (left) and Doris Muñoz (right) in Mija, directed by Isabel Castro.

Castro is never cynical about her subjects’ desire for great things, instead shooting them with beautiful, dreamy cinematography, and immersing us in Doris’s headspace through voiceover. When Castro uses slow motion and mood lighting, it romanticises a scene in the way that Doris and Jacks themselves romanticise their dreams. They’re always striving toward these perfect moments where they can have fun and enjoy music without worrying about the bureaucracy and financial worries that burden their day-to-day lives. There’s also evocative voiceover throughout the film from Doris, which Castro wrote using interviews with Doris and text from places like her Instagram captions. In the press notes, Castro wrote that she wanted this voiceover to feel similar to the voiceover in movies and TV she watched as a teenager like Clueless and Sex and the City. That voiceover helps you feel intimately connected to Doris from the get go. We’re not just watching her in verité footage, but hearing her inner thoughts, like a friend being confided to, or a diary entry.

The ending of Mija feels a bit abrupt, especially because Castro doesn’t check in with Jacks in the last twenty minutes of the film. But this abruptness is also apt; it feels right to leave Doris and Jacks in the middle of their journey, because Castro wants to tell a story about identity and dreams, not about whether they eventually find fame. She chose to stop filming as they were reaching for the stars, without staying to find out if they ever got to them.

We want to make sure you don’t miss out on any opportunities to watch Mija at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals throughout the year.

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Quick thoughts: All That Breathes is a stunning climate change parable

All That Breathes, a Sundance 2022 highlight, is a gorgeously-shot documentary about two brothers in New Delhi who have dedicated their lives to healing injured black kites.

Read all our Sundance coverage so far.

A still from All That Breathes in which a flock of black kites fly above a large stone structure, the sun glowing behind them. The still is next to a purple block that features white text, which reads, 'Quick thoughts.'
All That Breathes Sundance review: A stunning climate change parable.

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All That Breathes is a stunning portrait of two brothers, the men they work with, the city of New Delhi that they live in, and the rapidly polluting planet we all inhabit. It’s a film with an intimate scope that’s about so much more than it first appears to be. You might not know much about black kite birds going into All That Breathes, but you’ll leave this documentary caring deeply about them. Yet, this is no standard informational doc about ornithology. 

Shaunak Sen’s film follows a pair of brothers, Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, as well as their employees, particularly Salik Rehman, who run a makeshift bird hospital out of the brothers’ basement in New Delhi. Every day, they seek out black kites who have fallen from the polluted skies, or otherwise injured themselves, and nurse them back to health through surgery and other treatment. The safety of each and every kite is so important to them that, in one scene, we even see them risk their own health and safety to wade across a river and retrieve a single injured kite.

A still from All That Breathes, in which a man stares directly into the eyes of a small bird, which is perched on a desk in front of him.
Salik Rehman tending to a bird in All That Breathes.

The brothers’ care for every living creature is beautiful to witness, and complemented by the stunning images that Sen and his three cinematographers (Ben Bernhard, Riju Das, Saumyanada Sahi) create. The film opens with an extended nighttime take of the camera, low to the ground, panning across a stretch of dirt covered with rats, who are silhouetted against the orange glow of street lamps. These creatures, often viewed as dirty, are beautifully lit here, and we’re allowed an unusual intimacy with them, as the camera is so close, and the sound design picks up even the light patter of their feet. This is followed by similarly tranquil shots of a black kite gliding through the sky and flies perched atop a puddle of water. Throughout All That Breathes, animals — from birds to insects — are given closeups that show them in their best light, and that last enough time for us to actually observe and respect these creatures, as the brothers do.

As well as encouraging empathy for all creatures great and small, All That Breathes is one of the most moving and effective films about climate change I’ve seen, situating the care of black kites amidst the ongoing climate crisis. As the most polluted city in the world, New Delhi’s skies are thick with pollutants that cause the kites to drop out of the sky at alarming rates. Yet the kites also essential to reducing waste in the city. Sen shows us towering piles of garbage, and we’re told that these piles would be even taller — sky high — if it weren’t for the kites who consume garbage. Caring for the kites is not just about empathy; it’s an important act of aiding the ongoing function of a collapsing ecosystem. And it’s getting harder and harder every day, as more kites are injured or made sick by pollution.

As one of the brothers muses in a poignant voiceover, what they’re doing is a small band aid over New Delhi’s gaping wounds. All That Breathes is bittersweet in how it depicts people who are trying valiantly to make the world a better place, even when they know that their actions, alone, are only a drop in the ocean. It’s inspiring at times, and deeply melancholy at others. The brothers experience triumphs, such as an influx of funding after The New York Times writes an article on them. But they also face constant setbacks as the climate worsens, and as the attitude toward Muslim families, like theirs in New Delhi, grows increasingly hostile and violent. To continue doing the good work they do means pushing through exhaustion, fear, and instability. It’s a parable that will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to be a force for good, even when it felt insignificant amidst a crumbling world.

This gorgeous, heartbreaking, moving documentary falters only in one area: dealing with the strain that the brothers’ all-consuming commitment to the birds has on their family. In particular, the basement used as the bird hospital is below Nadeem’s family home, where his wife, Tabassum, and their two children live. She feels like a bit of an unexplored character, although we sense her resigned dissatisfaction from the way she silently looks on at her husband. The film lets you know how Nadeem’s commitment to his work leaves little time for anything else in his life, including family; at one point, one of his children runs up to him asking for him to play with them, and he gently says that now isn’t the time. There’s a tender scene of him completing surgery on a kite late into the evening, only for Tabassum to insist she finish off the surgery for him. He resists for a moment, before sinking back in exhaustion. Moments like these give colour to their relationship, but they also hint to us enough about Tabassum — she knows how to heal the kites, too! — that it’s frustrating that we don’t learn more.

We want to make sure you don’t miss out on any opportunities to watch All That Breathes at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals throughout the year.

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Explore the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction

Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction is a tour through contemporary creative nonfiction, aka hybrid or experimental documentaries. Discover films that push the boundaries of the documentary form.

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I Didn’t See You There shows you the world through a disabled filmmaker’s eyes

Reid Davenport’s personal essay film, I Didn’t See You There, radically questions the way disabled people have historically been presented in the media.

Read all our Sundance coverage so far.

A still from I Didn't See You There, in which a man in a wheelchair is seen silhouetted as a reflection in a glass panel, his silhouette eclipsed by the looming figure of a red and yellow circus tent. The text on the image reads, 'Review'. I Didn't See You There, a feature film directed by Reid Davenport, and reviewed by Orla Smith, shows you the world through a disabled filmmaker's eyes.
I Didn’t See You There, a feature film directed by Reid Davenport, and reviewed by Orla Smith, shows you the world through a disabled filmmaker’s eyes.

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In his “Meet the Artist” introduction on the Sundance YouTube channel, documentarian Reid Davenport describes his film I Didn’t See You There as important because “it’s an unapologetically disabled film, in its aesthetics and its seeming unconventionality.” Sundance has a history of programming films explicitly about disability, but often ones that still perpetuate ableism, such as Gleason (2016), which was about an incredibly privileged disabled man, or CODA (2021), which centred a non-disabled protagonist. So it was a shock and a delight to find I Didn’t See You There in this year’s programme, a film made by a disabled filmmaker that radically questions the way disabled people have historically been presented in the media. Davenport doesn’t just aim to tell the audience about his experience as a disabled person, but to show us the way he sees the world, using techniques that are rarely implemented on screen.

I Didn’t See You There is, at its core, an essay film, and one that may challenge viewers who aren’t inclined toward more experimental, image-rather-than-story based forms of cinema. As one of those people, I was also challenged by the film, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The film is essentially made up of short sequences from Davenport’s life, shot by a camera from his point of view, either with him holding the camera, or with the camera attached to his wheelchair. The scenes range from mundane activities like pouring himself a drink, to the long journey of taking an aeroplane to visit home, which involves waiting for accessibility aids to arrive so he’ll be able to exit the plane. Occasionally he will interject with voiceover, or we’ll hear him speaking to someone from behind the camera. The film encourages the viewer to see through Davenport’s eyes and to hear what he hears. The images he presents take a bit of getting used to, because for example, we’re not accustomed to watching film images shot from the height of a wheelchair, or to see the camera shake rapidly as it does when Davenport holds it, as he cannot hold it still.

In voiceover, Davenport discusses how he previously made a film about what it was like to grow up with a disability, which was all about how the world saw him. Now, with I Didn’t See You There, he says he hopes to do the reverse: make a film about how he sees the world. The pitching of a circus tent across the street of his Oakland apartment provides interesting context for the project. The circus, Davenport muses, has traditionally been a place for othered bodies to be gawked at; Davenport reflects on how that dynamic continues today, both in his everyday life (being stared at on the street), and in his filmmaking. (An ironic detail is the fact that P.T. Barnum, who popularised the circus in America, hailed from Davenport’s hometown of Bethel, Connecticut.) Davenport wonders if, by making films about himself, featuring himself, he has chosen a job in which his body is on display in a way he’s uncomfortable with. I Didn’t See You There is an attempted remedy.

Davenport recontextualises shaky images or images shot from unusual angles, which might otherwise be considered flaws in cinematography, as an authentic expression of his viewpoint. These images, and the sounds that accompany them, are also often very beautiful. Davenport includes many sequences of himself travelling around Oakland in his wheelchair, representing the city with an attentive eye and a rich, detail-focused sound design. Particularly enthralling are sequences in which he points the camera at one wheel on his wheelchair so that we can watch the many different textured surfaces the wheel passes over, and listen to their distinctly different sounds. This, I feel, is part of what Davenport means when he calls I Didn’t See You There “an unapologetically disabled film in its aesthetics.” It’s an observational documentary that observes and listens to details and images that are not experienced by non-wheelchair-users. Over seventy-four minutes, we make these observations along with Davenport. On the flip side, we also experience the unwanted gaze of passersby, as well as the feeling of invisibility when Davenport, on multiple occasions, attempts to cross a crosswalk only to be cut off by a car that doesn’t care to notice him. 

A still from I Didn't See You There, which shows us a slightly slanted view of a crosswalk, featuring the legs of a woman walking across it, and the shadow of a man in a wheelchair.
A still from Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See You There.

While I Didn’t See You There is not a particularly neatly-structured or organised film (not that it necessarily aims to be), it is an essential new text in the evolving conversation about depictions of disability on screen. While incredibly different formally, it feels of a piece with another creative nonfiction film in this year’s Sundance program, the NEXT film Framing Agnes, which discusses trans representation on screen. Both filmmakers, Reid Davenport and Chase Joynt, eschew the trite, conventional, and often offensive ways that the marginalised group they belong to are often portrayed on film. They use experimental nonfiction techniques to open up a conversation about how media depicts disabled people and trans people, respectively.

They also pose questions about the dangers of depicting at all. Framing Agnes proposes that some of the gaps in documented trans history could be viewed as a positive: not being seen might mean that that person was able to live in peace. Conversely, late into I Didn’t See You There, Davenport says, “I hope this will be my last personal film.” He questions the very film he’s making, and how in order to make a living in the creative arts, he’s felt pressured to put his body in the spotlight. Even here, where his body is not visible, it is still at the centre of the conversation. 

Even in a review of the film, like this one, it’s hard not to note how novel Davenport’s direct perspective is as a filmmaker with a disability, because it really is something we rarely see in film. The insights in Davenport’s voiceover made me think about how, even when making a film simply about his individual perspective on the world, Davenport cannot avoid making a film that people will take to be about A Disabled Person’s Perspective writ large, because there are few others films by filmmakers with disabilities to compare his work to. (As a side note, we do recommend Jennifer Brea and Takiya Coley’s Unrest as another must-see example.) 

Davenport, who runs the nonprofit Through My Lens, which aims to amplify the voices of people with disabilities, is evidently passionate about furthering the conversation around disability on film. But that doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting to mine your own life in order to do so. I hope that, if he so wishes, I Didn’t See You There can be Davenport’s last personal film. But I also hope he doesn’t stop making films that break cinematic convention in order to find new ways to tell stories that are rarely told.

We want to make sure you don’t miss out on any opportunities to watch films like Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See You There at virtual cinemas, VOD, and festivals throughout the year.

Subscribe to the Seventh Row newsletter to stay in the know.

Subscribers to our newsletter get an email every Friday which details great new streaming options in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Click here to subscribe to the Seventh Row newsletter.

Explore the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction

Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction is a tour through contemporary creative nonfiction, aka hybrid or experimental documentaries. Discover films that push the boundaries of the documentary form.

Download a FREE excerpt from the book

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Young Plato Review: great teaching means more than just academics

With Young Plato, Neasa Ní Chianáin continues her cinematic exploration — which began with In Loco Parentis (School Life) — of exceptional Irish teachers and the children whose lives they change. Young Plato screened at DOCNYC in 2021.

Young Plato is one of the 20 Best Films of 2022 so far.

Holy Cross Boys teacher Kevin McArevey leads his class in a run in Young Plato, directed by Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath.
Holy Cross Boys teacher Kevin McArevey leads his class in a run in Young Plato, directed by Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath.

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With Young Plato, Neasa Ní Chianáin continues her cinematic exploration — which began with In Loco Parentis (School Life) — of exceptional Irish teachers and the children whose lives they change. In School Life, which she co-directed with David Rane (who serves as a producer, though not a director, on Young Plato), Ní Chianáin followed two teachers at an Irish boarding school, married couple Amanda Leyden and John Leyden, to show how these teachers took care of the children’s emotional and intellectual needs.

In Young Plato, this time co-directed with Declan McGrath, Ní Chianáín (also serving as cinematographer) trains her camera on teacher Kevin McArevey, who teaches philosophy as a way to help boys process their emotions and find better ways of dealing with their anger. Both films keenly depict how great teachers who value critical thinking can be an important route to social change — but they can’t always entirely counteract the influence of wider society.

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Young Plato is set at an all-boys Catholic primary school in Belfast’s Ardoyne, a place at the centre of the Troubles where “Peace Walls” have been installed all over town to physically separate Catholics and Protestants. In the film’s opening, Ní Chianáin offers drone footage of the area, which grounds the story in a very specific place and its needs, even if McArevey’s methods could be more widely applied. Next, editor Philippe Ravoet expertly juxtaposes images of police in riot gear amidst violent crowds (which include children) with footage of parents taking their children to school — each on the same street corners. It’s a reminder that violence, anger, and hatred are deeply rooted in the community’s life, which makes combatting it at school all the more urgent and necessary.

In one of the first philosophy classes of the year, McArevey asks the boys to consider the question, “Is it OK to take out your anger on someone else?”. Students toss around a ball, possession of which grants them access to take the floor and express their opinions. McArevey encourages them to listen to each other, and often change their point of view in the process. McArevey facilitates the conversation, but like Socrates to his Young Platos, never opines. He only asks for clarification to make sure everyone has understood the point. As the boys discuss their arguments, more of them side against it being OK to take out your anger on others. They collectively come up with alternative solutions, like a punching bag. 

“Philosophy board” in Young Plato

When the boys misbehave and get into scrapes — usually taking out their anger on someone else — the punishment isn’t detention but ‘philosophy board’. They spend their lunch hour with McArevey instead of playing outside. Here, they must articulate, by writing on a white board, their feelings that led to the altercation. Then, they brainstorm strategies for dealing with a similar problem should it arise in future.

Along the way, McArevey congratulates the boys on their thinking. He always looks at incidents as one-time events rather than a commentary on the boys’ characters. He helps correct their grammar and spelling mistakes on the whiteboard like any other lesson. Whether discussing a theoretical idea in class or dealign with the aftermath of a real event, McArevey uses the same philosophical principles to get the boys thinking. He’s not just asking questions but teaching the boys a methodology for working out their own issues.

Teacher Kevin McAverey standing in from of the "philosophy board" as the students brainstorm how to control their anger in Young Plato, directed by Neasa Nï Chianáin and Declan McGrath.
Teacher Kevin McAverey standing in from of the “philosophy board” as the students brainstorm how to control their anger in Young Plato, directed by Neasa Nï Chianáin and Declan McGrath.

The school’s scaffolding extends beyond McArevey

It would be easy to make out McAverey as the lone saviour in a school full of backwards thinkers. But this is not the case. Chianáin and McGrath take pains to show the support system that scaffolds his work. Head of Special Needs Jan-Marie Reel emerges as a key player in how the school treats boys’ emotions seriously. For her, her job is partly about helping them learn to manage their emotions.

In one scene, a misbehaving boy goes to talk to Jan-Marie about what’s angering and annoying him. Her method is to make a list. If she can get him to articulate what’s wrong, she can figure out how the school can help the boy. She doesn’t push or judge him, only expresses interest in understanding what’s wrong so she can help where possible. His recent diagnosis of diabetes tops the list, but he also says he’s lonely and without friends. Keeping that in mind, Jan-Marie works to reinforce the support that he does have. When multiple teachers interrupt their meeting to check on the boy, she asks him how he got so popular.  

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Young Plato is full of incredible sequences like this, each crisply edited down into digestible segments. The boys inevitably get into scrapes, surface anger, or misbehave. Instead of slapping them on the wrist, the teachers at Holy Cross extend empathy. They note that this behaviour is not acceptable, but more importantly, they get to the heart of the problem. Teaching doesn’t end here; it continues. The teachers offer the boys the tools for understanding and dealing with their emotions. At the same time, this lets the boys know that their emotions matter.

McAvery dealt firsthand with the trauma of the Northern Ireland conflict and is in recovery from alcohol abuse. This makes him uniquely equipped to understand the need to give the boys tools to manage their anger, anxiety, and aggression. These are crucial for them to have a happy and successful life as individuals. High suicide rates currently plague both Ardoyne and Northern Ireland as a whole. He wants to help create a world where this is no longer the case.

McGrath and Ní Chianáin on Young Plato

As McGrath notes in his director’s statement, “Scientists now believe that not only can post-conflict trauma adversely affect a society but also that such trauma can be passed on through generations. The effects of conflict can cruelly afflict children who have had no direct experience of a war that was waged before they were born by their parents and grandparents. It is a vicious and unjust cycle of suffering that becomes hard to break.”

Ní Chianáin adds in her statement, “The head of Special Needs, Jan Marie Reel, explained to me that often the kids who struggled with academia were the very kids who were targeted by the dissidents, the drug dealers and organized crime. In a community where unemployment is high and opportunities scarce, kids who can’t use education as a route to a better future are often targeted by the unscrupulous. Making the right choices can easily become a matter of life and death in a community like Ardoyne. Learning to think for oneself, to reflect, analyse and plan, quickly becomes an essential life skill.”

Teaching empathy for a better world

Young Plato argues that teaching empathy to young children is necessary to help resolve societal and personal problems. The film comes after the Cannes premiere of two very thoughtful fiction films about children and the limits (and importance) of empathy: Laura Wadel’s Playground and Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents.  Both films also highlighted the general lack of communication between children and adults.

In Playground, shot from the children’s perspective, Wadel depicts a primary school playground as akin to a prison ground. So much physical and mental abuse happens between children that it’s impossible for well-intentioned teachers to police. And not all of them are that well-intentioned. In The Innocents, also shot from the children’s perspective, Vogt depicts the gap between children’s experiences and adults’ understanding. The Innocents also shows how a lack of empathy can be dangerous because children hurt others without intending to. But learning empathy can change that. 

Young Plato feels like a response to the problems affecting children which Playground and The Innocents highlight. It offers a way forward for how children and adults can better communicate. Young Plato suggests that children need to learn how to articulate their feelings. The children in McArevey’s class brainstorm strategies for managing their anger and anxiety. They serve as an exemplar for similar approaches that could be taken elsewhere. Perhaps, most importantly, Young Plato shows that school can’t end where recess begins. What happens in the classroom affects what happens outside of it. It’s the teacher’s responsibility to help make that outside world safer for everyone.

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Bootlegger, Albedo, The Boathouse and more fall highlights from so-called Canada

Alex Heeney takes a look at some of the best films from so-called Canada to premiere this fall, including Bootlegger, Albedo, and Portraits from a Fire.

From left to right: Stills from Bootlegger, Coextinction, Albedo, Portraits from a Fire, The Boathouse
From left to right: Stills from Bootlegger, Coextinction, Albedo, Portraits from a Fire, The Boathouse

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There was a time when you could fairly reliably sample the best films from so-called Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. But more and more every year, the festival’s Canadian programming gets worse while other regional fall festivals seem to program better Canadian films. Case in point: last year, Nadia, Butterfly, Rustic Oracle, Monkey Beach, and Call Me Human all made our list of the best films of 2020 — none of which screened at TIFF. Although we loved Scarborough and Night Raiders at TIFF this year, many of its Canadian selections were underwhelming (e.g., Learn to Swim, Oscar Peterson: Black + White, Drunken Birds, Charlotte) and many weren’t even available to Canadian press (e.g., All My Puny Sorrows). 

So this fall, I’ve been actively scoping out Canadian films at other festivals. Last year, I attended Sudbury’s CineFest festival virtually for the first time, and discovered some of my favourite Canadian films to premiere that year, including Quebexit. The programming this year was consistently good, offering a chance to catch up with TIFF films I missed, like the excellent Wochiigi Lo: End of Peace, and the well-acted but disappointing All My Puny Sorrows. More impressive though was their programming of Indigenous films — Bootlegger, Portraits from a Fire, and Wochiigi Lo: End of the Peace — which were consistently strong, and have also gone on to play many other regional festivals. The Calgary International Film Festival and Vancouver International Film Festival, which last year programmed the excellent John Ware Reclaimed, also screened must-sees like Returning Home, Coextinction, and Last of the Right Whales. 

With the caveat that I’m still catching up with Canadian films that screened at all of these festivals (including The Noise of Engines and Run Woman Run), here are five of the most rewarding films I caught on the Canadian festival circuit this fall which didn’t screen at TIFF. 

Bootlegger 

Devery Jacobs (centre) stars as Mani Caroline Monnet's Bootlegger
Devery Jacobs (centre) stars as Mani Caroline Monnet’s Bootlegger

Caroline Monnet’s feature debut, Bootlegger, follows a young Indigenous lawyer, Mani (Devery Jacobs), who returns to her home reserve, after years living away, in order to complete her graduate school research. On the reserve, alcohol has been banned — not by the Canadian government, as was the case in years past, but by the Indigenous leaders themselves. Mani is trying to encourage the creation of a referendum to let the community decide whether to keep the ban on alcohol which echoes colonialist history. 

Bootlegger is thoughtful in its exploration of what it means to become detached from your home as an Indigenous woman, as well as how Indigenous people can end up becoming complicit in their own colonisation because so few options are available to them. The film also positions alcohol as just one way in which the community is being destroyed (e.g., forestry is another). Jacobs is fantastic, as always, here speaking multiple languages. The film is also gorgeously shot. Not all of Monnet’s ideas are fully explored, but it’s certainly a conversation starter and essential viewing for Canadians.

Bootlegger screened at FIN Atlantic Film Festival, Cinefest Sudbury, Vancouver International Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, and ImagineNative Film Festival.

2. Portraits from a Fire

Still from Portraits from a Fire.
Still from Portraits from a Fire.

Tsilhqot’in filmmaker Trevor Mack’s feature debut, Portraits from a Fire, is a hugely ambitious film about family trauma, coming of age, and memory. The film follows sixteen-year-old Tyler (William Magnus Lulua) who dreams of becoming a filmmaker, and makes his own movies by himself using an old camcorder he found in his house. Tyler is mostly left to his own devices; his mother is no longer around, and his father is largely absent for work. When Tyler discovers footage of his parents when they were young, it sparks questions about the lies of omission about what happened to his mother. 

There’s a dreamy quality to Portraits from a Fire, which uses digital glitches in thoughtful ways to look at the link between video footage and memory. It’s also enormously funny and entertaining at times, hugely steeped in place and culture, and also heartbreaking. It doesn’t always work, with some particularly poor dialogue at times, but the performances are uniformly great. The film’s many thoughtful visual ideas make Trevor Mack a major talent to watch behind the camera.

Portraits from a Fire screened at Cinefest Sudbury, Calgary International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, and ImagineNative. Portraits from a Fire will be available on VOD across Canada on November 9.

3. Coextinction

Still from Coextinction

“Settler filmmakers Gloria Pancrazi and Elena Jean began the making of Coextinction as a fight to protect the Southern Resident killer whales, of which there are less than one hundred left. In the process of trying to understand what threatens the killer whales, they discover the dangers of the excessive noise produced by the shipping lanes, which interfere with the killer whales’ ability to find their prey. But soon, they realise the problem is not just with being able to find the prey, but the existence of the prey at all. 

These killer whales survive primarily off salmon, which Returning Home viewers will know are dwindling in numbers in the Pacific Northwest. Following the story behind the destruction of the salmon population lead Pancrazi and Jean to interact with many Indigenous leaders in the area. They also discover the detrimental effects of salmon farming (run by companies from outside of Canada). Their journey eventually leads them down to the States to discover how mega-dams (not unlike Site C) are obstructing the migratory path of the salmon population. They soon find, too, that killer whales aren’t the only species to depend on salmon; it’s an essential element of the food chain for many wildlife species as well as Indigenous Peoples.” Read more.

Coextinction screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival and Planet in Focus.

4. Albedo

Still from Albedo
Still from Albedo

It’s one thing to be told that the ice caps are melting; it’s another thing to see it for yourself. In Albedo, a scientific expedition heads close to the North Pole to document the coldest part of the Arctic Ocean and to document the ice floes. What they discover is that although the climate models suggest that the ice floes are intact, in reality, they are broken up into small, floating pieces, which will travel south and melt. If things are in such dire straits here, it’s only worse everywhere else. The film gets its title from the Albedo effect, wherein the ice on the earth’s surface reflects sunlight, preventing it from being absorbed into the earth and thus preventing heating. 

Albedo is a visual testament to how the Albedo effect works: if the ice melts, it will be replaced by darker water, which will absorb the sun’s light, further speeding up global warming. There’s an adventure story built into the film, because what would have been an easily navigated route ten years ago proves treacherous today because of the quickly changing climate and increasingly melting ice. The film is sometimes a bit long and clunky and doesn’t have the finesse of something like Coextinction or Wochiigi Lo, but it will completely change how you think about global warming and the state of the glaciers. It’s visually stunning, too, taking us to remote parts of the world we’ll never visit, and we get to watch firsthand as the team is shocked by just how much the world has changed and just how much the ice has melted.

5. The Boathouse

This thriller by Hannah Cheeseman, the director of Succor (one of our favourite shorts at TIFF20) starts out promising and then gets very silly. The film is mainly an excuse for a wonderful central performance by Michael Kurimsky, who first broke out in 2019’s Firecrackers with an amazing lead performance. 

Kurimsky stars as Anne, a music graduate student on leave who decides to take a job taking care of the children of her ex-advisor who disappeared, which means living at their cottage country home with her ex-advisor’s husband and two children. Pretty much every cliche you can imagine eventually comes up, but the film at least starts as a thoughtful look at power dynamics (especially within grad school). The film also features wonderful costumes by Mara Zigler, who has previously designed costumes for Sugar Daddy, Firecrackers, and Mouthpiece. Though I found the film ultimately disappointing, it’s great to see Kurimsky and Zigler doing such fantastic work, and Cheeseman continues to show great promise as a director.

The Boathouse screened at Cinefest Sudbury, Calgary International Film Festival, and Vancouver International Film Festival. 

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