Ever Deadly is a portrait of the acclaimed Inuk throat singer and author Tanya Tagaq. Co-directed by Tagaq and Canadian documentary filmmaker Chelsea McMullan (who directed the award-winning My Prairie Home in 2013), this beautifully crafted documentary combines exceptional performance recordings with interviews, verité camerawork, archival material, and hand-drawn animation. Intimate cinematography and crisp sound captures Tagaq’s innovative and experimental throat singing from the film’s incredible opening scene onwards. Loving moments with Tagaq and her children are filmed on location in Nunavut, and words from her novel Split Tooth provide poetry and rhythm to the film. Painful memories are recounted of Tagaq’s mother and her family being forced to relocate due to racist colonial policies, which allows us to appreciate Tagaq’s exploration of her Inuk artistic practice as an act of healing and resistance.
Q&A Oct 1
Media Partner
Tanya Tagaq, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Mary Gillis, Inuuja Gillis, Lucas Kalluk
Canada
2022
In English and Inuktitut with English subtitles
Nudity
Open to youth!
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Chasing Ice
This visually stunning film follows renowned National Geographic photographer James Balog on a harsh Arctic expedition where he captures a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers — undeniable evidence that our planet is in crisis. The screening will be introduced by James Balog.
Dead Lover
A foul-smelling gravedigger's romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley's classic.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Sansho the Bailiff
The third of the great Japanese masters (with Ozu and Kurosawa), Mizoguchi is a poet of suffering. There's plenty of that here in his exquisite telling of an ancient folktale about the enslavement of a woman and her two children.
Credits
Executive Producer
Anita Lee
Producer
Lea Marin, Anita Lee
Screenwriter
Tanya Tagaq, Chelsea McMullan
Cinematography
Alejandro Coronado
ANIM
Glenn Gear, Fred Casia, Parissa Mohit
Editor
Avrïl Jacobson
Original Music
Jesse Zubot
Directors
Photo by Luis Mora
Chelsea McMullan
Chelsea McMullan (they/their) is one of Canada’s leading filmmakers. They make documentary, experimental narrative, and hybrid films that explore the work of leading international artists. McMullan’s features, including My Prairie Home (2013), a musical documentary about the pioneering transgender musician Rae Spoon, have premiered at Sundance, Toronto, True/False, and other leading international festivals. They have directed episodes of the documentary series This is Pop (Netflix/Crave) and In the Making (CBC). McMullan has also made numerous short films about and in collaboration with international artists such as Eileen Myles, Zhang Huan, Isabelle Marant, and Ken Lum.
Filmography: My Prairie Home (2013); Michael Shannon Michael Shannon John (2015)
Photo by Thomas Van Der Zaag
Tanya Tagaq
From Nunavut, Tanya Tagaq is an improvisational singer, avant-garde composer, and author. She is a member of the Order of Canada and a Polaris Music Prize and Juno Award winner. Tagaq’s art challenges static ideas of genre and culture, and contends with themes of Indigenous rights, colonialism, environmentalism, racism, and violence against women and girls, in particular MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls). Tagaq has recorded with Saul Williams, Björk, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and more. She has composed pieces for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and created a sound installation for the National Maritime Museum in London.