Bolivian film Utama won the grand prize, while Navajo director Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso’s film Powerlands, about the displacement of indigenous peoples, won the communities award.
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Bolivian film Utama won the grand prize at the Montreal Native Festival on Tuesday night. Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s existential drama about an elderly Quechua couple living through a drought in the Bolivian highlands won the Teueikan (Creation) award.
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Another Bolivian film, El Gran Movimiento by Kiro Russo, was a finalist and also won Best Cinematography.
Navajo filmmaker Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso’s documentary Powerlands won the Rigoberta Mechú (Communities) award. The Canadian-American co-production examines the displacement of indigenous peoples and the environmental devastation caused by chemical companies, from Standing Rock to the Philippines.
The APTN Award for Outstanding Indigenous Filmmaker in the Past Year went to Bretten Hannam, director of the initiation film Wildhood. Hannam is a two-spirit non-binary Mi’kmaq, born and raised in Nova Scotia.
The Main Film International Award for Emerging Talent went to Siku Allooloo, an Inuk-Haitian-Taíno filmmaker from the Northwest Territories, for her film Super 8 Spirit Emulsion, about a woman’s bond with her mother in the spirit world.
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Paraguayan director Arami Ullón’s Apenas el sol (Nothing But the Sun) won Best Documentary. The film follows a man as he crosses the Paraguayan Chaco, recording stories, songs and testimonies of his Ayoreo people.
The award for Best Canadian Short Film went to Germaine Arnattaujuq, Neil Christopher and Louise Flaherty, the NFB production Arctic Song, an animated film featuring oral histories of creation in Iglulik, Nunavut.
Mexican Mariana X. Rivera won Best International Short Film for Flores de la Ilanura (Meadow Flowers), which tackles the subject of femicide within the Amuzgo nation in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
