Animated film has world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival

Some complementary exchanges with an award-winning writer several years ago has paid off for Métis filmmaker Amanda Strong.

Strong’s latest work, titled Inkwo for When the Starving Return, had its world premiere at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

TIFF began on Sept. 5 and continues until Sept. 15.

Strong’s film is an animated adaption from Richard Van Camp’s short story Wheetago War, which was published in 2015 in his short story collection called Night Moves.

Van Camp, the author of 28 books, is a Tłı̨chǫ Dene from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories.

“We were kind of just fans of each other’s work,” Strong said of Van Camp. “This is probably 7-8 years ago. I think he was emailing me about one of the films I had finished, Four Faces of The Moon. He was just in awe of the work. And I was aware of his writing.”

When Van Camp was praising her efforts, Strong decided to make a pitch to him.

“I mentioned that’s awesome and I’m a fan of your work and is there is any stories that you would want animated, specifically,” he said.

Wheetago War is the story that Van Camp sent to her.

The end result of that is Inkwo for When the Starving Return, an 18-minute film featuring Dove,

a young warrior that is given and then starts to comprehend not only the gifts but also the burdens of their Inkwo (medicine).

Dove uses the Inkwo to defend against an army of starving creatures.

The message in the film is that it is a call to action to fight against and protect against the evils of greed and consumption in our society.

“It’s animation which hopefully most people like,” Strong said. “I hope the message is available to people. And I do think it means different things to different people and that’s something I’m always excited about in works is that there’s an element that allows people to take their own messages from it or have their own experience of what it meant to them.”

Strong, who lives in Sechelt, B.C., said this particular piece of Van Camp’s writing was extremely appealing to her.

“There’s several things that drew me to this story, especially the main character Dove, really resonating around the sort of spectrum of gender,” she said. “And I’ve never really seen a character written like that before, especially who is Indigenous. That is something I personally connect to. And I know I definitely am not the only one.”

Strong, who is 40, is the owner and executive producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc. She co-produced the film with the National Film Board of Canada.

When she agreed to work on the project, she expected to complete it within a couple of years. But in reality, it took seven years to finish.

“COVID had a lot to do with it,” she said. “Also, I had a baby. There was lots of change and different things. But I wouldn’t say those were all the cause of delay. It was also just an ambitious project and even working with a co-producer like the National Film Board, there was a lot to mitigate around because it’s not a full NFB production. It’s a co-production with my company.

“It was an organic being that kind of shifted and grew. It kind of gained momentum as we worked on it. We also had to adapt a little bit. COVID had a little bit of a delay. We had to restructure how to work safely and elements being more remote. It definitely had a little bit of an impact on that.”

Strong added though the story might be uncomfortable for some, she believes it’s one that had to be told.

“There’s a lot of challenge around greed and how humans are treating the land the water, how we’ve forgotten about medicine and language and I think it’s an important story,” she said. “And for me making sure the focus and the epicentre is more about Dove and the return of power and medicine to the land in a time where it’s predominantly governed by greed.

“To me it’s an important story. It’s relevant. It’s timeless. To me it means the same as it did eight years ago. I don’t think many stories can hold that sort of power for that long.”

Strong also said Van Camp and other advisors were frequently consulted throughout the making of the film.

“They were involved, mostly because it’s not my story,” she said, adding real stories were the inspiration. “So, it’s very real and I wanted to ensure that I’m honouring and respecting this story in the best way that I could. So, it was extremely important for me to have Richard’s involvement 100 per cent along the way, with the story, the script, the animatic which is sort of our template to move forward with the animation.”

Inkwo for When the Starving Return had its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 7 as part of the festival’s Short Cuts programming.

The film will be screened again at the Toronto festival on Sept. 12.