The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.
This documentary started as part of a photography project about the indigenous Ainu population in northern Japan, portraying people from tightly knit communities. They feel deeply connected by their culture and tradition. With gorgeous pictures, the directors explore how different generations of Ainu reflect on their identity after centuries of oppression.
Thirty years ago, a rubber company enslaved a group of Asháninka people, manipulating them into tapping the trees in the lush borderland between Peru and Brazil. The company was expelled by a coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, led by one mixed race couple. Now the adult children of this marriage combat political corruption and ongoing environmental disaster.
A story of resistance across generations, the power of family and the unrelenting struggle for justice in a country that remains in denial.
The Europeans want to be forgiven for the tragic colonial period. The aborigines try to preserve their ancient roots from the present and the future. In the North Territory.
Exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.
It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?
Greenland has become a major geopolitical issue between the United States, Europe, Russia, and China due to its geographical location and mineral resources. Its geopolitical destiny will have significant ecological consequences for the entire planet. What choice will the people of Greenland make? The largest island in the world, with its 2.2 million square kilometers covered 80% by ice, is also one of the least densely populated territories on Earth, with barely 57,000 inhabitants. Mainly living off fishing, tourism, and Danish subsidies, yet sitting on a potential treasure. We are talking about 25% of the world's hydrocarbon reserves, the third-largest uranium reserves, and 20% of rare earths. An icy Eldorado that today sparks all sorts of ambitions, one of the hotspots where the future of our multipolar world is being shaped. This is what the film will explore, addressing both its economic and commercial challenges, as well as its geo-ecological and military implications.
Vicky is fisherman by day and bar owner at night. When she was a little boy her dream was to be a radio soap opera star, nowadays she dreams of falling in love again. How is it possible that a small, barren place in the third world has managed to achieve this special form of freedom and tolerance?
Profile of the Haida artist Bill Reid
Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.
An undercover documentary film produced and directed by British filmmaker Dominic Brown, about the struggle of the indigenous Sahrawi people of Western Sahara. The documentary covers the current human rights and political situation of the Sahrawi. There are several interviews recorded with human rights victims including an elderly lady who had been attacked in her home the previous day by Moroccan security forces. There is also a focus given to the alleged vested interests of countries in the region, particularly France. The film states that the French Government's close relationship with Morocco, their trade deals and their use of veto over the terms of the UN mission in Western Sahara are major factors.
For over 200 years, European history has taught us that Newfoundland's Beothuk people are extinct. Giving voice to the Indigenous people, archaeologists, genealogists, and historians from across Atlantic Canada, The Beothuk Story debunks this myth. Here, for the first time in Canadian documentary history, the Beothuk people speak for themselves. This is their story.
Carrie Davis was part of the child removal system near the end of the Sixties Scoop. With guidance from her uncle Emmett Sack and the community, Carrie reconnects to their land, language, and culture.
Shot during three seasons, Kenuajuak's documentary tenderly portrays village life and the elements that forge the character of his people: their history, the great open spaces and their unflagging humour. Though Kenuajuak appreciates the amenities of southern civilization that have made their way north, he remains attached to the traditional way of life and the land: its vast tundra, the sea teeming with Arctic char, the sky full of Canada geese. My Village in Nunavik is an unsentimental film by a young Inuk who is open to the outside world but clearly loves his village. With subtitles.
Andean communities fight to protect their water from contamination by mining companies.
Joyce Jonathan Crone—Mohawk matriarch, retired teacher, activist, humanitarian—reaches forward into her community of Huntsville, Ontario, opening hearts and bridging gaps for Indigenous education.
Nominated for an Emmy® Award in 2021 for best non fiction special. Winner of 35 grand jury awards. Filmed in 2016 at Standing Rock, North Dakota, this powerful documentary follows the Indigenous leaders as they unite the Native Nations for the first time in 150 years in order to rise up in spiritual solidarity against the unlawful Dakota Access Pipeline which threatens their treaty lands, sacred burial sights and clean water. These young Native Leaders honor their destiny by implementing a peaceful movement of resistance which awakens the world.
takayna / Tarkine in northwestern Tasmania is home to one of the last undisturbed tracts of Gondwanan rainforest in the world, and one of the highest concentrations of Aboriginal archaeology in the hemisphere. Yet this place, which remains largely as it was when dinosaurs roamed the planet, is currently at the mercy of destructive extraction industries, including logging and mining. Weaving together the conflicting narratives of activists, locals and Aboriginal communities, and told through the experiences of a trail running doctor and a relentless environmentalist, this documentary, presented by Patagonia Films, unpacks the complexities of modern conservation and challenges us to consider the importance of our last truly wild places.
The historic gathering of three hundred indigenous activists from North, South and Central America who met in Quito, Ecuador, in July 1990 to organize a cross-continental indigenous resistance to the Columbus Quincentennial.