ALFF FILMS

The Klabona Keepers

DIR. TAMO CAMPOS AND JASPER SNOW-ROSEN, 2022, BRITISH COLUMBIA | 69 MIN

SCREENING SPONSOR: DRIVING FORCE

The Klabona Keepers is a fierce account of the Tahltan Nation’s struggle to protect the Klabona Sacred Headwaters, an important natural habitat in northwest British Columbia, from commercial mining. The documentary intersperses verité cinematography with intimate interviews. It is an in-depth account of the different methods of resistance used by Indigenous Elders, which include blockades and tense stand-offs with police and mining industry workers. Powerful moments of reflection are felt throughout the film as the trauma of residential schools and forced relocations are brought to light.

Content advisory: triggers for residential school, drug and alcohol abuse.

KLONDIKE (KLONDAIK)

DIR. MARYNA ER GORBACH, 2022, UKR/ TUR | 100 MIN

DIRECTING AWARD: WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC, SUNDANCE 2022

The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the war. Irka refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Caught between Russian separatists and the expectation of loyalty to Ukraine, the couple try to balance the urgent and conflicting demands of civil war.

Shot in elaborately choreographed long takes, Klondike is a feat of intricate staging, and Er Gorbach uses unity of space to illustrate the ever-growing divisions among her characters. Tense, haunting, and tragic, this is a truly powerful work of art.

In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and Dutch with English subtitles.

Ukraine’s official submission for Best International Film for the 2023 Oscars.

L’INHUMAIN

DIR. JASON BRENNAN, 2021, QUEBEC | 85 MIN

Mathieu is a brilliant neurosurgeon whose perfect life is falling apart; impending divorce, job loss, substance abuse, and a mid-life crisis. The sudden death of his father forces him to return home to Anishinaabe territory, a place he has tried to avoid since his youth. Mathieu agrees to go and deposit his father’s ashes and wishes to find himself at the same time. Being away from the city promises to be a nice getaway until Mathieu realizes that he is now the prey of an evil creature known as the Wendigo. Mathieu’s pilgrimage quickly becomes a nightmare that will change him forever.

In French with English subtitles.

Content advisory: frightening and grisly scenes.

Living

DIR. OLIVER HERMANUS, 2022, UK/ JPN/ SWE | 102 MIN

Screening

SPONSOR: YUKON ENERGY

Living is the story of an ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive office routine to a shadow existence. At the eleventh hour he makes a supreme effort to turn his dull life into something wonderful. An English-language adaptation of Akira Kirosawa’s script of “Ikiru” (1952), set in London in the 1950s.

Content advisory: infrequent references to illness and death - little detail; frequent portrayals of alcohol and tobacco use in a recreational context.