YINTAH
A Documentary Film on the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Fight for Sovereignty
by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell & Michael Toledano
Winner of the Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs Festival 2024
DOXA Film Festival
Tuesday, May 7 – 8PM (PDT) @ VIFF Centre – Vancity Theatre
Thursday, May 9 – 3PM (PDT) @ SFU – Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
Saturday, May 11 – 3PM (PDT) @ SFU – Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
Festival/Community/Theatrical Tour in Spring-Summer 2024
The YINTAH team at Hot Docs 2024 (photos by Ludwing Duarte, courtesy of Hot Docs)
“Gives me chills … this is a very important film. A film about the struggle of our times.” – Mark Ruffalo
“Much like its subjects, Yintah is a film that knows its purpose, and serves it defiantly.” – Film Comment
“… an assured, gripping communiqué of whose histories we inhabit on and off screen, and how to ensure their preservation.” – Screen Slate
“… the gorgeous sweeping vistas documented by this film’s enrapturing cinematography gives way to hellish images of strewn, chewed up land marked by apparent and invisible broken barriers … Yintah vigorously paints a resiliency that will never surrender.” – RogerEbert.com
“… an incendiary feat of filmmaking … an urgent, eye-opening call to action.” – POV Magazine
“A poignant, powerful film unlike almost anything else you’ll see.” – The Grind
“Yintah is a beautiful and powerful film.” – NPR (KIOS at the Movies)
Following its World Premiere at the True/False Film Festival in March 2024, YINTAH – the story of the Wet’suwet’en people reoccupying their territory and resisting the construction of multiple pipelines – had its Canadian Premiere in Toronto at the 31st edition of Hot Docs where it was awarded the 2024 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary. Hot Docs’ Festival Programming Director, Heather Haynes, expressed that it was one of the longest standing ovations she has ever seen at the festival. The film also received an acknowledgement by the Jury of the Land|Sky|Sea category, which stated: “Yintah is a beautifully crafted, epic film that represents the ultimate in resilience with the power of women whose voices will not be silenced.”
YINTAH screens next in May at Vancouver’s DOXA Film Festival, followed by its European Premiere in June at Sheffield DocFest.
YINTAH, meaning “land”, is a feature-length documentary on the Wet’suwet’en nation’s fight for sovereignty. Spanning more than a decade, the film follows Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham as their nation reoccupies and protects their ancestral lands from the Canadian government and several of the largest fossil fuel companies on earth.DOXA SCREENING DETAILSTuesday, May 7 – 8:00 PM (PDT) @ VIFF Centre – Vancity TheatreThursday, May 9 – 3:00 PM (PDT) @ SFU – Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema Saturday, May 11 – 3:00 PM (PDT) @ SFU – Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema The May 7 & 9 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Directors Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano, alongside Film Subjects Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ Molly Wickham and Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson – a Wet’suwet’en delegation will also be in attendance.The May 11 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Directors Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano – a Wet’suwet’en delegation will also be in attendance.
doxa2024.eventive.org/films/6604d3f8c999c1027ac570fc
Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson, stands in ceremony while police arrive to enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction at Unist’ot’en Healing Centre. (Photo Credit: © Amber Bracken)
Gate of entry to unceded Unist’ot’en territory near Houston, British Columbia. (Photo Credit: © Amber Bracken)
Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a Wet’suwet’en wing chief, photographed during the Coyote Camp blockade. (Photo Credit: © Micheal Toledano)
These images are licensed for promotion and publicity of the documentary feature film ‘Yintah’. Any usage beyond the purpose of reviewing or commenting on the film, including reports related to the subject matter, is unauthorized copyright infringement subject to fees and damage costs.
YINTAH, meaning “land” in the Wet’suwet’en language, tells the story of an Indigenous nation’s fight for sovereignty as they resist the construction of multiple oil and fracked-gas pipelines across their territory.
Over the period of a decade, the film follows Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson, Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, and their fellow land defenders as they reoccupy their traditional territory and galvanize their nation in a fight against several of the largest fossil fuel companies on earth.
YINTAH is about an anti-colonial resurgence—a fierce and ongoing fight for Indigenous and human rights. The film reveals the hypocrisy of the Canadian government’s espousal of reconciliation, as Indigenous land is still being seized at gunpoint for the purpose of resource extraction.
The Hereditary Chiefs’ claim to jurisdiction over the territory is supported by a 1997 Supreme Court of Canada decision. When a lower court effectively sidesteps this decision, granting pipeline companies access to Wet’suwet’en land, Wet’suwet’en leaders put their bodies on the line, building barricades to keep the companies out.
Ultimately, YINTAH is the story of the Indigenous right to stewardship and sovereignty over their territories. Freda, Molly, and the land defenders are part of a centuries-long fight to protect their children, culture, and land from colonial violence. For the Wet’suwet’en, their very future is at stake.Mirroring the scope and ambition of the Wet’suwet’en fight to protect unsurrendered lands from theft, YINTAH offers the definitive account of a historic wave of Indigenous resistance to Canadian colonialism. Drawing from more than a decade of verité footage, the film shadows two Wet’suwet’en leaders (Freda Huson and Molly Wickham) as they reoccupy and protect their homelands in the face of state violence.
As filmmakers, we found that Canada protects its image through force. Throughout the years our camera operators were held at gunpoint, repeatedly arrested and detained, subject to illegal police exclusion zones, surveillance, harassment, and even incarceration. Despite this repression, YINTAH is a film where every consequential moment was captured, providing a remarkably cohesive account of a story that police worked hard to suppress.
As colonial forces conspired to criminalize Wet’suwet’en jurisdiction, we as filmmakers worked to uphold it. The result is a film which was compiled under the traditional laws and collective authority of the Wet’suwet’en house groups at the center of this story – developed with intensive participation from Wet’suwet’en leaders and co-directed by the immediate family members of the film’s protagonists. Adopting a decision-making structure which mirrors the practices of Wet’suwet’en self-governance, the film relied on collaboration and consensus-building to share this vital history from an authentically Wet’suwet’en perspective.
As a result, YINTAH is itself both an expression of Indigenous sovereignty and an attempt to decolonize history. With direction from Wet’suwet’en elders and dozens of community members, and aided by narration from the film’s protagonists, YINTAH offers an honest, uncommon, and unapologetic perspective of Canada’s brief time on Wet’suwet’en lands. In the words of Violet Gellenbeck, an elder and chief who participated in the filmmaking process: “For the first time it is our own people telling our history.”
— Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell, Michael ToledanoCREDITSFEATURING
Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson
Tsakë ze’ Sleydo’ Molly Wickham
DIRECTORS
Jennifer Wickham
Brenda Michell
Michael Toledano
PRODUCERS
Jennifer Wickham
Brenda Michell
Michael Toledano
Bob Moore
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Sam Vinal
Doris Rosso
Daniel Cross
Mila Aung-Thwin
CO-PRODUCERS
Katie McKay
Valerie Shamash
Franklin López
LINE PRODUCER
Vee Di Gregorio
EDITOR
Ryan Mullins
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Michael Toledano
CAMERA
Melissa Cox
Dan Loan
Jesse Freeston
Sam Vinal
Keir Knight
Grace Burke
Alexandra Kotcheff
MUSIC
Olivier Alary
ADDITIONAL MUSIC
Johannes Malfatti
SOUND DESIGN
Benoît Dame
Catherine Van Der Donckt
DISTRIBUTOR
EyeSteelFilm
Runtime: 125 mins
Languages: English, Witsuwit’en (with English subtitles)
Produced with the Participation of:
Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, Rogers Documentary Fund, Indigenous Screen Office, International Documentary Association, SODEC, Creative BC, The Canadian Film or Video Production Tax CreditProduced in Association with:
CBC, Ford Foundation JustFilms
EyeSteelFilm is a documentary film and interactive media company dedicated to using cinematic expression as a catalyst for social and political change. It was created to develop cinema that empowers people who are ignored by mainstream media, a mandate that has taken the company to explore projects, people and ideas around the world. For over 20 years, Montreal’s award-winning EyeSteelFilm has made an international impact with social issue documentaries such as Twice Colonized (2023), Big Fight in Little Chinatown(2022), Midwives (2022), Softie (2020), Dope is Death (2020), Anote’s Ark(2018), Let There be Light (2017), I am the Blues (2015), Deprogrammed (2015), Chameleon (2014), Forest of the Dancing Spirits (2013), Inside Lara Roxx(2011), RiP! A Remix Manifesto (2009), as well as a series of films chronicling modern life in China: Bone (2005), Chairman George (2006), Up the Yangtze(2007), Last Train Home (2009), Vanishing Spring Light (2011) and China Heavyweight, (2012). In the process, it has been the recipient of over 100 international awards.eyesteelfilm.com
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