Skip to main content
WaaPaKe film image

WaaPaKe

This event has passed

World Premiere

WaaPaKe is a story about resilience, love and transformation. Examined through an Indigenous lens, the stories of residential school Survivor-Warriors and their families offer an understanding of both intergenerational trauma and healing. We are taken to a studio set-up in front of a green screen. Through compassionate, candid conversations, Jules Koostatchin shares interviews with five individuals, family and friends, that all directly or indirectly experienced intergenerational trauma. They tell of their survival, and the impacts felt throughout families and generations. The word “Waapake in swampy Cree means “tomorrow” and it’s used to signify how they move forward in a good way and work towards healing with each other, within families, and within the community around them. Thematically it is a powerful, courageous, and vulnerable documentary. WaaPaKe reflects where we are in Truth and Reconciliation in Canada after the unmarked graves, and offers hopeful and determined perspectives looking to the future.

 

October 1 & 4: Q&A with director Jules Arita Koostachin & crew

 

Presented by

Series Media Partner

Community Partner

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2023

Series

Insights

Language

In English and Cree with English subtitles

Film Contact
Content Warning

Depictions of Racism, Residential Schools, Sexual Language

PG
80 min
Documentary Human Rights & Social Justice

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Executive Producer

Shirley Vercruysse

Producer

Teri Snelgrove

Screenwriter

Jules Arita Koostachin

Cinematography

Michael Bourquin

Editor

Jessica Dymond

Original Music

Justin Delorme

Director

Jules Arita Koostachin headshot

Photo by Karolina Turek

Jules Arita Koostachin

Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin (Attawapiskat) is an award-winning filmmaker, mother, and academic. Social justice themes emerge in her films, alongside bravery, healing, connection and humour. Jules honours her Cree-speaking grandparents who raised her, and her mother, a residential school Survivor/warrior. Jules is an alumni from Concordia’s Theatre program, including Toronto Metropolitan University’s Documentary Media masters program, receiving early recognition with an Award of Distinction and an Academic Gold Medal for her thesis documentary film, Remembering Inninimowin. Jules holds a Ph.D. in Indigenous documentary from UBC.

Filmography: Broken Angel (2023); Placenta (2012); Remembering Inninimowin (2010)

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Wild River

Dir. Elia Kazan
112 min

Tennessee Valley Authority man Montgomery Clift finds derision from the locals, love from the war widow Lee Remick, and obduracy from matriarch Jo Van Fleet, who just won’t leave that scheduled-to-be-flooded farm.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Inedia

Dir. Liz Cairns
107 min

Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Hustler

Dir. Robert Rossen
135 min

Prime Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson, a hungry pool shark who knows he's the sharpest guy in the room. Jackie Gleason and George C Scott have other ideas.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Oldboy

Dir. Park Chan-wook
120 min

The second movie in Park's Vengeance Trilogy. Choi Min-sik stars as Dae Su, inexplicably held captive by he-knows-not-who for 15 years, and then, just as inexplicably, released. Not surprisingly, after all this time, he has only one thing on his mind...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Apocalypse in the Tropics

Dir. Petra Costa
110 min

An Academy Award nominee for Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa returns with a fascinating take on how the Evangelical movement has taken Brazil by storm and worked with the right to undermine the constitutional separation of Church and State.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Ghosts of the Sea

97 min

Imagine an especially poetic true crime podcast about a sailor who built his own sailboat and lived on the high seas, but lost not one, but two wives along the way... Now imagine it told from the vantage point of his daughter: Ghosts of the Sea.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema