FIFEQ – Indigenous Futures: Memory, Territory, and the Future + Q&A [FREE SCREENING]

Free admission, limited seating available ! We advise you arrive 20 to 30 minutes before the start of the session to ensure your seat.

Co-presented with Isuma and Wapikoni Mobile, this screening opens a space of encounter with works that explore the connections between territory, memory, transmission and futurity. Through documentary, experimental and poetic forms, the films gathered offer plural Indigenous perspectives rooted in lived experience, cultural survivance and the invention of possible futures.

This programme is deeply connected to the editorial line of this 22nd edition: it questions how myths and truths are constructed within colonial societies that privilege certain voices over others. Memory becomes here a tool of resistance and openness, toward circular temporalities and futures shaped as much by the legacies of the past as by new possibilities.

The programme is built around Mobilize by Caroline Monnet (NFB) and Aki by Darlene Naponse, co-presented with Isuma, accompanied by two short films in collaboration with Wapikoni Mobile, for a screening that aims to make images into passages between times, narratives and communities.

Mobiliser Mobilize Caroline Monnet  (3 min)
Canada, 2015, no dialogue 

Produced as part of the NFB’s Souvenir series, Caroline Monnet’s *Mobiliser* draws on the National Film Board of Canada’s archives to offer a gripping journey from the Far North to the urban South.

Against ever-changing landscapes, the film observes the gestures of daily life with intensity and precision. Driven by the powerful rhythms of the polar punk track “Uja” performed by Tanya Tagaq, the film highlights the tension between territorial roots and urban expansion. Through this reappropriation of the archives, Caroline Monnet crafts a sensory and organic work that captures the strength and resilience of a people on the move.

Qu’est ce que je te montrerai? Elie-John Joseph (9min37)
Canada (Innu) 2021

In the tradition of direct cinema, “What Shall I Show You?” is an intimate documentary in which a grandfather and his grandson discuss the past and future of Innu culture.

Nuukhuum uumichiwaapim Lindsay Chewanish (4 min 59 sec)
Canada (Eeyou/Cree) 2025, no dialogue

“Nuukhuum uumichiwaapim” (“My Grandmother’s Tipi”) is an immersion into the sensory and tactile world of a grandmother’s tipi. This documentary draws on memories of life in a tipi, observing the joy of cooking and the passage of time.

Aki Darlene Naponse (1h23min)
Canada, 2025, no dialogue

Aki, an Anishinaabemowin word meaning “land” or “country,” is a contemplative and immersive documentary filmed over the course of the seasons in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, in northern Ontario. With no narration or dialogue, the film is carried by the soundscapes of wind, water, life, and ceremony to tell the story of a people deeply rooted in their land.

Darlene Naponse, filmmaker and member of the Atikameksheng community, invites us into her territory and offers an intimate glimpse into the layers of daily life: fishing, harvesting maple syrup, gathering medicinal plants. Places where stories emerge through gestures, spaces, and the non-verbal. Underlying it all, the film carries stories of colonization, environmental exploitation, and cultural erasure, set against the enduring strength of a community that persists and creates.

Aki is a film about memory without nostalgia, resistance without spectacle, and language beyond words.