Maliglutit (Searchers)

Directors Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk), Natar Ungalaaq (Inuk)
Year 2016
Run Time 93min
Genre Action/Adventure, Drama
Fifteen years ago, Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk won the prestigious Caméra d’or for Best First Feature at Cannes with Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. His second feature, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, opened TIFF in 2006. A decade later, Kunuk and collaborator Natar Ungalaaq have used the plot of John Ford’s 1956 western The Searchers as inspiration for a very different kind of revenge story, in which an Inuk man and his band of maliglutit ("followers") set out across the barren Arctic in search of the marauders who have ransacked his home and kidnapped his wife.

Like Ford’s film, Kunuk's Maliglutit (Searchers) explores the repercussions of violence, asking whether these hunters have begun to act like those who have torn apart their family. Very unlike Ford, Kunuk questions not only the colonial ideology inherent to the western genre, but also the possibility of justice in a seemingly unjust world. With a tale as timeless as the landscape in which it is set, Canada’s foremost Inuk filmmaker has provided us with another classic.

Directors

Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk)

In 2015, Atanarjuat was selected as TIFF’s number one Canadian film of all time. Kunuk has directed shorts such as Exile and Home and features such as Maliglutit, which was nominated for two CSAs. He recently directed the series Hunting With My Ancestors and executive produced SGaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife). His latest feature, One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, premiered at TIFF 2019. Most recently, he directed the short The Shaman’s Apprentice, which won the CSA for Best Animated Short among other awards at festivals worldwide.

Writers

Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk), Norman Cohn

Cast

Benjamin Kunuk (Inuk), Karen Ivalu (Inuk), Jonah Qunaq

Producers

Cara Di Staulo, Jonathan Frantz, Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk)

Genres

Action/Adventure, Drama

Interests

BIPOC Stories, Indigenous Filmmaker

Original Language

Inuktitut