Awards & Prizes

David Hernandez Palmar, Rehab Nazzal, Maya Menchú, Alain Fournier, Melissa Gélinas, Ivey Camille and Main Film

Awarded as part of the First Peoples’ Festival to a young emerging artist in visual arts and fine crafts. With
a $1,500 bursary for the winner.

Winner: Catherine Boivin

Awarded to a short film for the quality of its cinematic expression (narrative structure, cinematography, set
design, editing, sound design, direction of actors, screenplay, animation techniques, etc.).

Ex aequo
Heroínas
by Marina Herrera, Perou, 2021

Almost 250 years ago, an Indigenous noblewoman named Tomasa Ttito Condemayta gathered together over a thousand women to fight against the Spanish colonial rulers. In present-day Peru, female followers of all ages bring gifts to her resting place where they dance and celebrate together to draw strength and courage or request protection and good grades. A mockumentary in tribute of this special heroine. (2022 Berlinale)

Heroínas wins –ex aequo– Best International Short Film.

Awarded to a short film for the quality of its cinematic expression (narrative structure, cinematography, set
design, editing, sound design, direction of actors, screenplay, animation techniques, etc.).

Ex aequo
Nhakpoti
by Pat-i Kayapó, Paul Chilsen, Brazil, 2023

The legend-story of how agriculture came to the Mêbêngôkre-Kayapó in the Brazilian Amazon. The film stands as the very first narrative project by the Mêbêngôkre-Kayapó in the community of A’Ukre where community members reenact this traditional story.

Nhakpoti wins –ex aequo– Best International Short Film.

Awarded to a Canadian short film for the quality of its cinematic expression as a whole (narrative structure, photo direction, set design, editing, sound concept, direction of actors, script, animation techniques, etc.). With a $2,500 bursary for the winner.

Winner
Kanatenhs – When The Pine Needles Fall
by Ellen Gabriel, Canada, 2021

The ancestral territory is a place of memory. The women who took part in the Mohawk resistance in 1990 are once again speaking out to reaffirm their attachment to the pine forest and the cemetery there. And their voices have lost none of their relevance 33 years later. Artist and Mohawk activist from Kanehsatà:ke, Ellen Gabriel recalls the central role, too often overlooked, of women in the struggle to preserve the territory.

Kanatenhs – When The Pine Needles Fall wins Best Canadian Short Film SRC-Espaces autochtones.

Awarded to a Canadian short film for the quality of its cinematic expression as a whole (narrative structure, photo direction, set design, editing, sound concept, direction of actors, script, animation techniques, etc.).

Special Mention
Braided Together
by Victoria Anderson-Gardner, Kyle Schmalenberg, Canada, 2022

A friendship develops, and the two new friends discover that their friendship is more important to each other than they first thought.

Braided Together earns a special mention in the Best Canadian Short Film SRC-Espaces autochtones category.

Awarded to an emerging indigenous filmmaker, from Canada or elsewhere, for a film revealing promising talent. With a $1,000 bursary.

Winner
The Voyager’s Legacy
by Victoria Anderson-Gardner, Kyle Schmalenberg, Canada, 2022

During the Dawn Raids, the three youngest children of a Samoan family reimagine the world as a place of fairy tales, swords and sorcery. (The Dawn Raids of 1974-76 represent the period when colonial New Zealand police could enter homes or stop people in the street to ask for permits, visas, passports. This brutal measure was applied almost exclusively to Pacific islanders.)

The Voyager’s Legacy wins the Main film Emerging Indigenous Filmmaker Award.

Awarded to an emerging indigenous filmmaker, from Canada or elsewhere, for a film revealing promising talent.

Special Mention
Street Lights
by Te Mahara Tamehana, Aotearoa NZ, 2022

For a broken whānau (extended family), one night could be all it to takes to find redemption, forgiveness and love between three generations.

Street Lights earns a special mention in the Main film Emerging Indigenous Filmmaker Award category.

For Aboriginal filmmakers based in Canada who have made a film with international distribution potential. Films entered for the APTN award are also eligible for this prize. The winning films will be screened at the Matera International Film Festival in Italy (Sept 30 – Oct 7 2023); the award includes travel both ways Montréal-Matera for the winning filmmakers.

First Prize
Bones of Crows
by Marie Clements, Canada, 2022

Unfolding over 100 years, Bones Of Crows is a feature film told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch Aline Spears as she survives a childhood in Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse.

Bones of Crows wins First Prize Air-Canada – Matera Award.

For Aboriginal filmmakers based in Canada who have made a film with international distribution potential. Films entered for the APTN award are also eligible for this prize. The winning films will be screened at the Matera International Film Festival in Italy (Sept 30 – Oct 7 2023); the award includes travel both ways Montréal-Matera for the winning filmmakers.

Second Prize
Chasseuse de sons (Ever Deadly)
by Tanya Tagak, Chelsea McMullan, Canada, 2022

An immersive, visceral music and cinema experience featuring Tanya Tagaq, avant-garde Inuit throat singer, and created in collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Chelsea McMullan. This documentary explores Tagaq’s transformation of sound with an eye to colonial fallout, natural freedom and Canadian history.

Chasseuse de sons (Ever Deadly) wins Second Prize Air-Canada – Matera Award.

A $750 bursary awarded to a documentary filmmaker in Canada, with an offer to present his/her film on
the FM3.ca VOD platform, to encourage him/her in the production of meaningful works about Aboriginal
peoples and cultures.

Kaatohkitopii: The Horse He Never Rode
by Trevor Solway, Canada, 2022

Trevor Solway is a Blackfoot filmmaker from the Siksika Nation. In this touching film, he evokes the living memory of his grandfather, a residential school survivor, a cowboy who competed in rodeos and taught the art of horsemanship to his grandchildren.

Kaatohkitopii: The Horse He Never Rode wins Les films du 3 mars Canadian Documentary Scholarship.

For the documentary film that succeeded, in form and content, in illustrating a factual or intangible Aboriginal reality, by authentically rendering the lives and stories of the protagonists.

Whetū Mārama – Bright Star
by Toby Mills, Aileen O’Sullivan, Aotearoa NZ, 2021

Polynesians were the most adventurous voyagers on earth. They sailed the vast Pacific by the stars. But these ancient arts were lost for 600 years. Then the stars re-aligned and three men from far flung islands met by chance. Nainoa Thompson from Hawaii, Mau Pialug from Satawal, Hek Busby from Aotearoa / New Zealand. Together they revived the Polynesians’ place as the greatest navigators on the planet.

Whetū Mārama – Bright Star wins Les films du 3 mars Best Documentary Award.

APTN Award dedicated to an aboriginal filmmaker who has distinguished himself/herself during the year. Outstanding Achievement of the Year in Aboriginal Cinema.

Bones of Crows
by Marie Clements, Canada, 2022

Unfolding over 100 years, Bones Of Crows is a feature film told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch Aline Spears as she survives a childhood in Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse.

Bones of Crows wins the APTN Recognition Award.

Prizes awarded by the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation to productions by an indigenous people or community on the theme of “identity, discrimination and intercultural dialogue”, or which respond to a need for community development in terms of speaking out, recording collective memory, preserving cultural heritage, moving towards healing, fighting for rights, popular education or economic leverage.
The Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation asks the winners to donate a good video copy of their prize-winning work for non-profit use by the Foundation, for dissemination and awareness-raising purposes.

Twice Colonized
by Lin Alluna, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, 2023

Following the death of her son, Aaju Peter embarks on a frantic quest to recover her language and culture, from which she was cut off by colonial assimilation policies. Finding herself, healing wounds, overcoming traumas, confronting colonialism, changing the world… is that mission impossible? Twice Colonized, backed up by seven years of filming, shows that courage, emotion and conviction can combine to have a lasting influence on the course of history.

Twice Colonized wins Second Rigoberta-Menchú Award.

Prizes awarded by the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation to productions by an indigenous people or community on the theme of “identity, discrimination and intercultural dialogue”, or which respond to a need for community development in terms of speaking out, recording collective memory, preserving cultural heritage, moving towards healing, fighting for rights, popular education or economic leverage.
The Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation asks the winners to donate a good video copy of their prize-winning work for non-profit use by the Foundation, for dissemination and awareness-raising purposes.

We Are Guardians
by Chelsea Greene, Rob Grobman, Edivan Guajajara, USA, 2023

In the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, a kaleidoscope of characters and perspectives intersect, including those of Indigenous forest guardians, scientists and illegal loggers, to provide a fulsome portrait of the causes and harms of deforestation. The stakes are high as Marçal Guajajara, from Arariboia territory, and activist Puyr Tembé, from the Alto Rio Guamá region, lead the fight to protect their forests. Illegal resource extraction has tripled since Jair Bolsonaro took power in 2019, and widespread political and corporate corruption means it’s up to the guardians to stop the invasion of loggers. Interconnected with global markets, Canadian companies are implicated in the illegal trade by an investigative journalist who tracks the export of stolen wood to US and Canadian companies. In addition to logging, illegal extractive practices including mining and ranching are having a devastating impact, not only on Indigenous sovereignty but also on global climate stability. Grand bird’s-eye cinematography captures the vast river and diverse landscape of the state of Amazonas, a backdrop that echoes the increasingly complex and critical situation. (2023 Hot Docs)

We Are Guardians wins the Rigoberta-Menchú Grand Prize.

La rebelión de las flores
by Maria Laura Vasquez, Argentina, 2022

In October 2019, a group of Indigenous women from conflict zones peacefully occupied Argentina’s Ministry of the Interior for 11 days, demanding an end to “terricide” in their communities. Faced with the State’s negligence as well as society’s indifference they successfully advocate for the return to a way of life where reciprocity and solidarity between peoples and nature prevail.

La rebelión de las flores receives a Special Mention in the Rigoberta-Menchú Award category.

Prizes awarded according to artistic merit to films that have shown originality in the subject matter and the mise-en-scène, relevance in their cinematographic approaches and which correspond, in substance and form, to the soul of the First Peoples.

Closed System
by Bawaadan Collective, Canada, 2021

A genetically modified invasive species, bred to eat plastic and spin it into rope, makes a bid for freedom in the last wilderness on earth. A dutiful scientist is sent by a ruthless algorithm to hunt it down and destroy it. As she experiences the forest for the first time in her life, the scientist begins to question everything she has been taught about pollution, conservation, and the mythos of the untouched wilderness.

Closed System wins the Teueikan Second Prize.

Prizes awarded according to artistic merit to films that have shown originality in the subject matter and the mise-en-scène, relevance in their cinematographic approaches and which correspond, in substance and form, to the soul of the First Peoples.

A Boy Called Piano
by Nina Nawalowalo, Aotearoa NZ, 2022

This heart-breaking story details Luafutu’s time as a state ward. At its core, it is a story about fathers and sons, intergenerational trauma and redemption. Using his voice for the voiceless, Luafutu vitally brings his own story to light.

A Boy Called Piano wins the Teueikan First Prize.

Winner: Jean-Pierre Fontaine « Anisheniu »

Jean-Pierre Fontaine « Anisheniu » wins the 2023 Dude Award.