International Premiere
This deep dive into the contentious history of fishing management in Washington State proves richly rewarding. It’s a compelling film that opens up important conversations around Indigenous treaty rights, the extent and limitations of federal and state jurisdiction, colonial racism and hypocrisy, activism, cooperation, and conservation, to name just a few.
The film finds its centre in the Boldt decision of 1974, a pivotal legal hearing in which a Nixon-appointed judge decreed that treaty rights granted local Native American bands — including the Makah, Quinault, Skokomish, and the Nisqually — 50% of the catch, up from the 2% they had been permitted previously. The ruling was transformative economically, but also politically, and Washington State spent the next decade attempting to have it overturned.
Fish War is buoyed by an abundance of colourful archival footage and lively interviews with many of the leading figures in the fight, and cleverly threads the difficult needle of the ongoing crisis confronting all of us who care about the salmon: the bands were catching more fish at 2% of the yield in 1970 than at today’s 50% allocation.
Oct 2 & 4: Q&A with directors Charles Atkinson, Jeff Ostenson & Skylar Wagner and producers Kari Neumeyer & Ed Johnstone
Media Partner
Community Partner
Willie Frank III, Russell Hepfer, Ramona Bennett, Lisa Wilson
USA
2024
English
Coarse language
Open to youth at SFU Woodwards
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Ed Johnstone, Justin Parker
Producer
Kari Neumeyer, Jeff Ostenson, Charles Atkinson, Tiffany Royal
Cinematography
Charles Atkinson
Editor
Skylar Wagner
Original Music
Black Belt Eagle Scout
Jeff Ostenson
After being a mental health therapist and working with his family’s fruit packing and shipping business, Jeff Ostenson found his way to filmmaking in 2006. Since then, he has primarily focused on the project management and business end of making films, ensuring that every project delivers on time, on budget, and in a way that the client and production team enjoy, and that the created media exceeds the project goals. Over his 17+ year career in film, he has continually engaged deeper in story development and driven each member of North Forty’s creative team further to hone their craft. To date, he has directed and produced hundreds of short films, most about forest health or salmon restoration, including 11 short films in partnership with Northwest Treaty Tribes Media.
Charles Atkinson
Charles Atkinson is a filmmaker out of the Pacific Northwest. He studied filmmaking at Biola University, and after 6 years in Los Angeles, he couldn’t resist the call home – back to the snow and the heat of central Washington. Atkinson’s favourite thing to do is connect audiences with new ideas using filmmaking. He spends most of his time focused on the visual language of projects and believes that every film he works on can deliver a powerful visual story. Atkinson has shot hundreds of short films and several feature-length documentaries in his 13-year career.
Skylar Wagner
After graduating in 2010 with a cinema and media arts degree from Biola University, Skylar Wagner entered a 12-year career as a reality TV editor. He worked on a wide variety of dance competition, travel, nature, and docu-drama shows for national cable broadcast and was the lead and finishing editor on many of those. During that time, Wagner collaborated with North Forty Productions on many projects, including a regional Emmy-nominated doc short and a feature-length documentary. In the past year, he took a VP of Post position with North Forty and serves as lead editor on all of their projects.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
School of Rock
With not one, but two new Richard Linklater movies at VIFF this year (Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon), we thought it would be fun to revisit a choice cut from his rich back catalogue: the best Black and White movie ever made, School of Rock.
Boyhood
A dozen years in the making, Richard Linklater's masterpiece chronicles the evolution of a boy into a young man, from six to 18. It is the ultimate coming-of-age movie, and one of the most audacious cinematic feats of the decade.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
Godland
In the late 19th century, a Danish Lutheran priest is dispatched to a far corner of Iceland where a devout farmer has seen fit to build a church. The physical journey is arduous. His spiritual journey, more taxing still.
The Balconettes
In this flamboyant black comedy set in Marseille during a heatwave, writer-director-star Noémie Merlant and her two besties have to cover up the unpleasant evidence of a disastrous night partying with the hunk across the way.