Canadian indigenous filmmakers are having a moment at the Toronto Film Festival this year, with eight features in the official lineup.
That has Eva Thomas, a writer and filmmaker from Walpole Island First Nation, busily working the room during an Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) breakfast at TIFF‘s Lightbox headquarters. The goal is drumming up buzz for the world premiere of her feminist crime thriller Nika & Madison on Sunday night.
Ahead of the Toronto premiere, Thomas and her team have plastered downtown Toronto with “Wanted” posters from a fictional Wyandot County Police with the faces of Nika and Madison, two young indigenous women played in the feature by Ellyn Jade and Star Slade and who are forced on the run after a violent encounter with a predatory cop.
Crucially, Nika & Madison have financing from the ISO, Canada’s film financier for First Nations storytellers like Thomas. “Money is fundamental to the process and being able to have the support of the ISO means we have a record number of indigenous features at TIFF,” Thomas tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Besides Nika & Madison, the official Toronto fest lineup includes mostly world premieres for Shane Belcourt & Tanya Talaga’s Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising; Bretten Hannam’s Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts); Tasha Hubbard’s Meadowlarks; Zacharias Kunuk’s Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband); Gail Maurice’s Blood Lines; Darlene Naponse’s Aki; and Rhayne Vermette’s Levers.
Kerry Swanson, CEO of the ISO, says indigenous filmmakers were doing a lot with little financing for decades. That’s before, in recent years, the Canadian government steered dedicated funding to support First Nations creative talent.
The federal government financing, in part, supports efforts towards reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians after historical racism and injustices. But Swanson and indigenous filmmakers are mindful that financing currently directed at them can always be taken away if the country’s political winds blow elsewhere.
“We can never stop fighting, not just to grow our funding, but to maintain the funding that we have in the face of cuts, in the face of this backlash against inclusive programs and funding initiatives. We’re very aware of that,” Swanton argues.
The ISO, and its Canadian government backers, as a result, have been putting money into training for First Nations storytellers to launch and bolster their careers. That training initiative is very much on the mind of Eva Thomas: “What this time allows me to do is build a skill set that can be used in short films and in television and features, scripted or non-scripted, or in documentaries. So if they come along and say, ‘we don’t have any money for you anymore, that skill set will sustain my career.”
Julie Roy, executive director and CEO of Telefilm Canada, Canada’s film financier, points to $4 million in annual funding for indigenous filmmakers with an eye to supporting them on a number of fronts, including at major film festivals like Toronto, Cannes and Berlin.
“It’s amazing for us to see the evolution of what they (indigenous filmmakers) are doing and what new voices they have. These are very human stories, and this tells us we’re in a very good direction,” Roy explained. At the same time, Telefilm is directing funding into training and boot camps for indigenous filmmakers to future-proof their careers.
“We need to continue to support them and to build careers and to make their voices heard around the world, not only in Canada and in their communities,” Roy added.
The Toronto Film Festival continues through Sept. 14.