The Cinematheque

“Remarkable … Before Tomorrow is further evidence of a people finding their cinematic voice and employing it to striking effect.”

Jesse Wente, TIFF

Named Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF 2008 and selected for Sundance in 2009, this affecting Inuktitut-language film, co-directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, is set against an Inuit group’s first contact with Europeans in the mid-19th century. As their community buzzes with rumours about the impending arrival of White explorers, elders Ningiuq (co-director Ivalu) and Kutuujuk (Mary Qulitalik), as well as young Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu), Ningiuq’s grandson, journey to a remote island to dry the clan’s cache of fish in preparation for winter. The concluding film in Isuma’s ​“Fast Runner” trilogy (after Atanarjuat and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, both also screening), Before Tomorrow was the first narrative feature of Arnait Video Productions, an Igloolik-based collective, co-founded by Cousineau and Ivalu, devoted to empowering and amplifying the voices of Inuit women. In Inuktitut with English subtitles.

“Profound, elemental, and hauntingly beautiful.”

Alissa Simon, Variety

“Something of a racially inverted, north-of-the-border Western.”

Andrew Schenker, Village Voice