Toronto: Indigenous Directors Flex Artistry With Bigger-Budget Films

A years-in-the-making initiative by the Canadian government and industry financiers has led to a historic close-up for Indigenous filmmakers at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

“What we’re seeing is continued momentum that is real and is only increasing in the diversity of filmmaking and the success of (indigenous) filmmakers themselves,” Kerri Swanson, CEO of the Indigenous Film Office (ISO), tells The Hollywood Reporter after her organization helped finance eight First Nations filmmakers with movies premiering at TIFF this year.

Those include Cody Lightning’s hockey drama Smudge The Blades, Marie Clements’ Los Angeles-set drama How We Stand, Alexandra Lazarowich’s Turtle Island RAP and Nyla Innuksuk’s In the Heart of the South.

Federal Canadian government financing has been key to supporting ongoing efforts to fund First Nations filmmakers, including higher film budgets than in decades past, and to foster reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians after historical racism and injustices. “It’s about indigenous peoples telling your stories in your voices, and often in your languages, and that’s indispensable to showing the beauty of Indigenous culture,” Canadian minister of identity and culture Marc Miller told a TIFF event on Saturday morning hosted by the ISO.  

Gail Maurice, who was at TIFF last year with the world premiere of her second feature, Bloodlines, about a Métis same-sex romance led by actor Dana Solomon, insists ISO support has been key to launching and sustaining her as a director, including for her debut feature Rosie. “The ISO has backed me up right from the beginning of my career. Without them, I don’t think I would have made my first feature film,” Maurice tells THR.

She adds that legends-led storytelling by indigenous filmmakers requires Canadian industry funders and distributors to be aware of different First Nations cultural backgrounds and communities from across Canada, coast to coast. “We have our own beliefs, and much of the world bunches us up into what they remember from Westerns. We’re so much more than that and we’re seeing that representation in films at TIFF,” Maurice added.

Annual funding for indigenous filmmakers in Canada offers support on a number of fronts, from script development to support at major film festivals like Toronto, Cannes and Berlin. ISO’s Swanson points to increased collaborations with U.S. partners, such as with Reservation Dogs, the coming of age series created by Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo and which featured an all-Indigenous lead cast and creative team filled with Canadians.

“They have shared relations, a shared history and the (U.S.-Canadian) border is arbitrary for the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island,” Swanson argues.“There’s a natural desire to work together and the cross-border collaboration is something that the ISO has been really advocating for since the beginning and for a flexibility to allow us to work together across the border, not just in Canada.”