The 13th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is to open with festival favourite Alanis Obomsawin screening her latest documentary, The People of the Kattawapiskak River.

“Throughout her decades long career, Alanis has produced work of great importance to global Indigenous cinema,” Jason Ryle, imagineNATIVE executive director, said Wednesday in a statement.

“With this latest film she continues her commitment to present a real picture of Indigenous perspectives that are often overlooked or unheard,” he added of Obomsawin’s commitment to telling traditional native Canadian stories.

Obomsawin, the doyenne of Canadian native filmmakers, will bring her feature about the struggling Attiwapiskat First Nation in Ontario to the Bloor Hot Docs cinema on October 17 for a world premiere.

And the imagineNATIVE festival will close on Oct. 21 with a gala screening of Benjamin Bratt-starrer The Lesser Blessed, director Anita Doron’s coming of age feature set in the Northwest Territories that debuted at TIFF.

Photo: Alanis Obomsawin, via NFB.ca