Healing through laughter is often a way our communities use play to engage with serious issues. These filmmakers will make you look at things with a smirk, a chuckle, or even a downright knee slap, rejoicing in the resilience of our people.

Woven together by language, whispers, hair, and sacrifice, KIN TIES explores our relationships to the ancestors and to the land.

Strengthening our family makes our culture strong. These films celebrate birth, children, mothers, fathers, and our Elders to show us we are all journeying together and that no one is left behind because our voices matter and because family matters.

Celebrating the voices of our Elders we see the footprints they leave behind for us to follow, the wisdom of their teachings, and how their teachings echo through our lives

Paige Bethmann’s debut Remaining Native is a vital, unflinching documentary that follows runner Kutoven Stevens, who goes by Ku, on his journey from small-town Nevada to an out-of-state university. Through a masterful use of voiceover and interview, Bethmann explores the meaning behind Ku’s choice to honour his ancestors’ survival of boarding school through his dedication to running and the path that it sets him on. It’s not a film that offers easy answers, but rather a deeply human portrait of Indigenous individuals navigating the complexities of their heritage in a world that often seeks to erase them. It’s a powerful testament to the enduring strength of community and the ongoing fight to preserve cultural identity and to find healing. Most recently awarded SXSW’s Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Best Documentary, Remaining Native is a necessary film and offers a crucial perspective on the lived realities of Indigenous people today.

Over six years, Ninan Auassat: We, The Children embeds itself among three groups of youth that live on the Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree, and Innu Nations. Told entirely from the point of view of the children and teens, the level of trust and caring that filmmaker Kim O’Bomsawin has put into these relationships is evident by the candidness of what the youth share. In between sweeping cinematography, they talk about what life is like in a fly-in community, the complications of being in school with Innu being their first language, and how their lives are different from non-Indigenous kids their age. Apart from the differences, this film also shows how similar children are, no matter where they’re from.

Indigenous women’s contributions to the growth of Indigenous Cinema were never easy. From the early days of Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s career to today’s emerging Iskwewak storytellers, Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin meets with Indigenous female filmmakers to share their stories and struggles of breaking into the industry and what it takes to uplift the next generation.

A tight-knit village on the outskirts of Oaxaca called La Raya is a place where everyone leaves for work in the North. It’s also home to Sotera Santos, a young girl whose parents have promised to return for her. Sotera and her friend Eric discover a mysterious fridge and, after trying to sell it around the village, they discover it has magical properties. This bright dramedy combines the realities of migration for those left behind, found families, and a dash of magic realism to depict a charming community that has plenty of heart.

Commissioned in celebration of imagineNATIVE's 15th anniversary, the Festival is thrilled to present the Embargo Collective II, five short films created by five distinguished artists. Executive produced by Danis Goulet, these shorts push the creative boundaries of the participating filmmakers and invite viewers into new Indigenous cinematic landscapes. Based on Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, the first Embargo Collective — presented in celebration of imagineNATIVE's 10th anniversary in 2008 — was a landmark project in Indigenous Cinema and was celebrated and screened internationally. The 2014 Embargo Collective II works, each created by a female Indigenous Canadian filmmaker, cross genres and themes as they collectively explore the spirit of filmmaking. Most of the descriptions for this program are republished from the 2014 imagineNATIVE Catalogue.

In March 2008, imagineNATIVE formed the Embargo Collective, an international group of seven Indigenous artists who collaborated and challenged one another to create seven new films. Each of the artists has an impressive body of work, demonstrating exceptional talent and vision with a different focus in media arts — documentary, fictional narrative, and experimental work — and each representing diversity of Indigenous Nations. These artists were chosen for their enthusiasm for collaboration and their willingness to be open to a challenge. Inspired by filmmaker Lars Von Trier's documentary The Five Obstructions, imagineNATIVE encouraged the members of the Embargo Collective to push their creative boundaries by asking them to construct a set of limitations for one another. While the initial goal was to demonstrate how essential the collaborative process is to film, a far more profound and intimate result materialized over 20 months: As the filmmakers shared their experiences, inspired one another, and created work together, a collective spirit was born. What you are about to see are the fruits of the collaboration, a true testament to what film can be when artists come together to create. Most of the descriptions for this program are republished from the 2009 imagineNATIVE Catalogue.