This year’s National Canadian Film Day hopes to celebrate what organizers say is an exciting moment in Indigenous cinema.

Motivated by the recent success of Indigenous films like Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders (pictured), Tracey Deer’s Beans, Bretten Hannam’s Wildhood, and Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum, Reel Canada has teamed up with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival to make National Canadian Film Day’s 2022 Spotlight “Celebrating Indigenous Voices.”

“There have been wonderful Indigenous films for decades, but there’s an explosion now of just so much more, you’re seeing so much talent coming forward,” Sharon Corder, artistic director of Reel Canada tells Playback Daily. “It just seemed it was really time to put a spotlight on it and celebrate it. Some of the very best work that’s being done in this country is definitely Indigenous work.”

On Wednesday (April 20), Canadian films will be shown for free at over 1,100 screenings across the country at cinemas, schools, art galleries, and military bases as well as in diplomatic missions on every continent. Organizers say this year’s 2022 edition is particularly important because it gives a spotlight to a slew of homegrown films that saw their theatrical releases halted or delayed by the pandemic.

This year will feature more than 25 Indigenous movies that were made from 1997 to 2022 and told from an Indigenous lens. They’ll be screened at 300 to 400 of National Canadian Film Day’s in-person events, which also include livestream discussions. A slew of broadcasters and streamers, along with various festivals, are also participating with programming to mark the day.

Governor-General Mary Simon will serve as the patron of the day this year, delivering a recorded greeting for viewers at every event.

National Canadian Film Day will screen “Indigenous-made” films, which it defines as a project in which at least two of three key roles – writer, director or producer – are filled by an Indigenous person.

“If you look at the [Canadian] streamers, Crave, Gem, there’s not just one or two — there might be a whole curated section of Indigenous voices,” says Reel Canada’s Indigenous Film Programme manager, Ariel Smith, who’s a video artist from the Nêhiyaw (Cree) nation.

“It’s not just stuff that’s about Indigenous people, but made by. I think that there’s a lot more understanding around the importance of narrative sovereignty.”

The history of Indigenous films in Canada goes back to the National Film Board of Canada’s “Indian Film Crew” program in 1968, Smith notes. However, movies made by settlers with First Nations as story subjects were thrown in the same category as films created by Indigenous peoples for decades.

While First Nations’ filmmaking has always been strong, the level of financing for major productions is new, says Smith. “I would say there’s always been high-quality Indigenous-made films coming out of this country, however, what has changed is the support that Indigenous filmmakers are receiving.”

One major game-changer on that front has been the 2017 establishment of the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO), a national advocacy and funding organization that champions Indigenous screen-based storytellers and narrative sovereignty, and serves First Nations, Inuit and Métis creators of screen content in Canada. In February, a report created in collaboration with the ISO and APTN called for more careful consideration when it comes to eligibility and review processes for Indigenous-specific funding programs to prevent false claims of Indigeneity.

Another crucial factor in creating more Indigenous-led content has been the 2019 On-Screen Protocols & Pathways study commissioned by imagineNATIVE, which outlines cultural principles, key findings and best practices for filmmakers, production companies, and funders when depicting Indigenous content on screen.

Smith points to the writer-director of Night Raiders as an example of what happens when Indigenous storytellers are given a shot.

Night Raiders is produced by Tara Woodbury for Uno Bravo; Paul Barkin for Alcina Pictures; Ainsley Gardiner and Georgina Condor for Miss Conception Films/Whenua Films; and co-produced with Chelsea Winstanley for Defender Films. Taika Waititi, Defender Films, serves as executive producer alongside Lisa Meeches and Kyle Irving of Eagle Vision, Tim White of Southern Light Films and Noah Segal and Adrian Love of Elevation Pictures.

The dystopian sci-fi drama recently won six Canadian Screen Awards and broke the record for the widest theatrical opening weekend for an Indigenous filmmaker in Canada in October with 80 locations, before Omicron closures.

Smith notes Goulet has been making short films since the early 2000s but just recently got the opportunity to make her first feature film. “It’s not that Danis Goulet hasn’t been a talented filmmaker this whole time, but it’s taken this long for her to be able to get the support needed to create something like a high concept dystopian sci-fi thriller film that is expensive to make,” she says.

One indication of how much work Indigenous actors, writers, directors, and producers are getting is the challenge of booking them as guests for this ninth edition of National Canadian Film Day.

“We ask filmmakers and actors to be guests on the day in various places (around the country) and this year it’s been a stretch because all of them, practically, are shooting their next projects somewhere else,” Corder says.

“There’s a huge untapped audience in this country for every Canadian film ever made, and I think that’s especially true for Indigenous (films) and that’s why we do this, that’s why this day exists and that’s why we’re spotlighting it,” Corder adds. “These are good movies. People like good movies.”