“Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts)” is a simple story with a lot on its mind. At its core, writer-director Bretten Hannam‘s tale follows two siblings (played by Blake Alec Miranda and Forrest Goodluck) traveling through the titular haunted forest in order to exorcise some demons from their lives. But their journey involves profound moments with their past and future, examining how the Mi’kmaw people, Indigenous to Nova Scotia, relate to the land and to each other. The film will have a chance to make an impact in its own country during its world premiere on Sept. 6 at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.
Hannam, who uses they / them pronouns, said they find genre films to be a way to draw people into a scary story and leave them thinking deeply about the ideas the filmmaker is interested in exploring.
“Genre is a universal language, so in a way it’s a shortcut to people who are going to sit down and say, ‘We’re going to watch a scary movie,’” they say. “There are tropes that you fulfill, or hopefully you hit or twist in new ways. There is a chance to present something that’s human, that’s a pain or joy, a triumph or a question. I love posing questions and seeing the journey that I’m taking people on, to get them to a place where if they sit down, watch it and give it a chance, they’ll be pulled right into it. It’s subversive.”
A L’nu filmmaker living in Mi’kma’ki, this is Hannam’s third feature which showcases stories of the Indigenous Canadian people, following the 2015 action movie “North Mountain” and the 2021 coming-of-age film “Wildhood.” Yet the genesis of “Ghosts” predates both of those projects, as they have been developing the idea in pieces through various stages for 11 years.
“It was unorthodox in the way it came together,” they say. “I write down everything. So, I have this kind of cool idea, and then this idea of moving through different periods of time, and then maybe they go together, maybe this adds in, and this adds in, and then suddenly it all kind of clicked together.”
When asked what ideas they’d want audiences to discuss after watching the film, Hannam looks energized by envisioning their art’s lasting impact.
“It would be the bee’s knees if I could hear people talking about their relationships with their own personal history,” they say. “Or the history of their community or the history of their land, and how those things are all interconnected. There’s a lot emotionally in the story, but it feels heavy with intergenerational trauma. So I think every family has some of these wounds that we carry.”
Despite the weighty ideas, Hannam believes people will find hope in “Ghosts.”
“It’s an opportunity with this movie to say, ‘Nothing is beyond being healed, nothing is beyond being repaired,’” they say. “There’s always a chance that, as uncomfortable and difficult and harrowing as it is, that you can open those wounds and clean those things out, and begin to build or rebuild those relationships with everything around you: Your community, your family and your friends.”