Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Canada/Nunavut | 2001 | 172 mins | Fiction | Inuktitut w/English subtitles
Co-sponsored by Susan Teare and George Zavis
Based on an ancient Inuk folktale and set in the village of Igloolik, in what is now the Canadian territory of Nunavut, Atanarjuat was the first feature-length film made entirely in the Inuktitut language. It was also the first Canadian motion picture to win the Caméra d’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. To fully appreciate the significance of Atanarjuat, it helps to understand the film it is in conversation with: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. It demystifies the exotic, other-wordly aboriginal stereotype by telling a universal story that is at least 1,000 years old, recording a way of life that still existed within living memory.
Romantic tensions lead to tragedy within a small, closely knit community of people who depend on one another for survival, surrounded by a landscape of ice and snow. The Fast Runner shows how people either learn to get along under those circumstances, or pay a terrible price.
This film is not available in VTIFF's Virtual Cinema.