Award-winning director, Zacharias Kunuk’s latest feature film, ‘One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk’, has been selected for Canada’s Top 10 Films of 2019 by the Toronto International Film Festival.
Set in Kapuivik, Nunavut, the film dramatises an actual encounter with Igloolik elder Noah Piugattuk’s normadic Inuit band in 1961 and the chance meeting between him and a white government agent which signalled a momentous change for him.
Speaking on the inspiration of the film, Kunuk recounts: “I was born into the same community as Noah Piugattuk, and his life story of being forced off the land into government settlements is my story too. I was born on the land and forced to move into a government settlement as a child. I was separated from my culture, given an Eskimo Identification number (E5-1263) and schooled in English.”
“I decided to become a filmmaker so I could tell stories like One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk. These are our experiences and our history, told from our point of view. Our stories share a side of history that most Canadians don’t know about,” he continued.
Shot on location in north Baffin Island, the film stars Apayata Kotierk, Kim Bodnia as well as Benjamin Kunuk and has been described by The Guardian as “a compelling recreation of historic events.”
‘One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk’ premiered at the 58th Venice Biennale and the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, opened the ImagineNATIVE and Media Festival and was named the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival’s “Best Canadian Film”.
