[projekktor id=’26743′]

Named as one of Canada’s Top Ten films of 2016 by the Toronto International Film Festival, Maliglutit (Searchers) is an Inuit drama directed by Zacharias Kunuk and co-directed by Natar Ungalaaq. The film is based in part on the John Wayne film The Searchers and stars Benjamin Kunuk, Jocelyne Immaroitok, Karen Ivalu, and Lucy Tulugarjuk.

Nunavut, circa 1913. Kuanana returns from a caribou hunt to discover his wife and daughter kidnapped, and the rest of his family slaughtered. His father’s spirit helper, the loon Kallulik, sets him on course to overturn fate and reunite his family.

“When I took up the idea of making “Maliglutit (Searchers),” I wanted it to be a western genre movie made entirely the Inuit way,” explains Kunuk. “After focusing for some years on documentaries, I felt it was the right time to return to narrative fiction. As a child I heard stories of women being kidnapped. Albeit rare in our day, wife stealing may be as old as Inuit culture itself. We began by imagining what it would feel like to live through or witness a kidnapping then tried to find the emotional truth of the situation. Our intent was to always keep it real.”

Maliglutit is rated G.