It's a good day for seal hunting during the Arctic spring of 1961. Noah Piugattuk and his family pull their sled dogs across the white canvas. The sun transforms the snow white and sky blue into light and space. It is an image of something so distant that any colonial patronising of this lifestyle seems ridiculous. But the hunters are visited by the " boss", who is tellingly played by Kim Bodnia (The Bridge) and who thereby stands for statemandated enlightenment – here on behalf of the Canadian government. He is meant to convince the Inuits to move to a state-driven settlement. Armed with biscuits and humanistic gentleness, he starts a historical palaver between two cultures, whose strategies of attrition here prove to be equally strong.
Zacharias Kunuk, the founder of the Inuit production company Igloolik Isuma and of the first web portal for indigenous filmmakers Isuma TV, has been world famous since Atanarjuat in 2001 (the first film in the Inuktitut language). The way he stages this dance of patronising blackmail and state-driven minority altruism and lets the character of the translator function as an intercultural saboteur is stunningly casual, witty and brilliant.
