Indigenous Women Grab More Screen Space at the Toronto Festival
variety.comJennie Punter By Jennie Punter From icons and industry veterans to emerging directors and new faces, the stories and creative power of Indigenous women are featured at the 2022 Toronto festival.
Buffy Sainte-Marie alighted opening night Sept. 8 to launch Toronto’s streetfest, just an hour before the premiere of Madison Thomas’ “Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On,” The doc explores the artistry and activism of the Cree singer-songwriter — the only Indigenous person to win an Oscar (for song “Up Where We Belong” from “An Officer and a Gentleman” in 1983).
Buoyed by the ascendant advocacy and investment of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) and the longstanding grassroot networks across the arts, this year’s slate further broadens the festival’s evolving programming ethos with narrative films that reflect the histories, dreams, and day-to-day realities of Indigenous women filmmakers and their communities.
For the “Bones of Crows,” esteemed multihyphenate Marie Clements held close the stories of her mother and aunties — “these beautiful strong women who also survived residential schools, to various degrees” — in shaping the fictional multigenerational story of Cree matriarch Aline Spears (played by three actors over the course of the film), who becomes a wartime Cree code-talker and raises a family, all the while tormented by memories of abuse, which she eventually seeks to expose.
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