By Deb Steel,Sam Laskaris

Copyright windspeaker

Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk is considered one of the pioneers of Indigenous cinema.

He’s directed more than 40 documentaries and five feature films, all in the Inuktitut language.

Kunuk is now hoping his latest film, titled Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), will inspire others to follow in his filmmaking footsteps. The film is scheduled to screen at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) in October. The festival runs from Oct. 2 to Oct. 12. Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) will screen Oct. 8 at 9 p.m. and Oct. 10 at 3 p.m.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where it won the best Canadian feature award.

“We’re trying to train a new generation,” Kunuk said. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing in this film. And I hope that the younger generation keeps making these films, because 100 years from now they’ll be studying these films. So we have to get them right—as right as possible.”

Kunuk, a 67-year-old Inuk, is best known for his 2001 feature film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. It was selected as Canada’s best film of all time in a TIFF film critic poll in 2015.

Though he’s hopeful there will be many other Indigenous filmmakers in the future, Kunuk has some doubts.

“I never went to film school. I learned by trial and error. But probably down there (in the south), if you go to a film school, you have to follow standards. So, you’ll never really go back to the culture,” he said.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do, show our culture, our stories,” he said. “But I want to see more of others, like southern Indians, doing their own story with no influence of Europeans. But I’m probably still dreaming.”

Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), which was filmed in Nunavut, is a historical drama about an arranged marriage from about 4,000 years ago.

“I wanted to do it in the summertime so it’s all summer shot here on our little island Igloolik,” Kunuk said. “And what we were trying to do this time with the actors was using the old actors from Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner to train new actors. So, we came up with new actors on this film.”

Since some of the actors were new to the industry, Kunuk said he did his best to make them feel appreciated.

“When you’re a director and people are doing their job, you have to pat them in the back and say ‘good job’ at the end of the day,” he said. “That’s what I was doing and I was really satisfied with the new actors.”

As with many of his previous films, Kunuk said he had a lengthy process before filming as he met with Elders and experts to make sure the dialogue and costumes in the project were as accurate as possible.

“It’s a routine that we always follow when we’re trying to get into a story we want,” he said. “We could make a fake story. But we want a real good story based on true story. And that’s when we gather Elders just to clarify things that we may be doing wrong. That’s what we don’t want to do. So, we meet with the Elders to do things right.”

For this latest film, Kunuk consulted with five Elders. He was already well acquainted with the film’s arranged marriage subject matter.

“I had heard pretty (much) most of the story before,” he said. “The Wrong Husband story is based on true story, because in the Inuit culture, when agreements are made, it’s all done in the head since there was no paper and pens to write on.” And those agreements were meant to last forever.

“So, when somebody made an arranged marriage agreement, that sticks for life,” Kunuk said. “I want to bring that up. Since then, we’ve all been Christianized and we know Christians. They bulldoze over a culture. But bringing back the culture is what I really like to do because way up here in the Arctic at this time of the year there’s no night. It’s 24 hours of sun. And in the wintertime, in December, we lose the sun for a whole month.”

Kunuk was keen to implement other cultural aspects into his film.

“I heard of stories about trolls when we were children living off the land,” he said. “Our parents would tell us not to wander too far or the troll will get you. So, I have a troll in this film. And I also have a fog lady in this film. Good spirit. The troll is a bad spirit. So, I have two shamans who are controlling humanity.”

Like his previous movies, Kunuk’s Wrong Husband film is in Inuktitut.

“When we do our films, we’re focusing on our culture,” he said. “There’s no other cultures involved. It’s just us talking, with subtitles in another language. That’s just the routine we take.”

Details on the film and ticket information are available at https://viff.org/whats-on/viff25-wrong-husband