The closing night film chosen for this years imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Uvanga, showcases Inuk life in the small Nunavut town of Igloolik. Uvanga is the story of a Montrael woman, Anna, who returns to Igloolik after 14 years with her son, Thomas, whose late father was Inuk. The filmmakers do the beautiful Nunavut landscape justice as the hardships of local life and family is introduced to Thomas. The directors Madeline Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau are the co-founders of Arnait Video Productions, an all women’s film collective based in Nunavut.

During the post film discussion, Ivalu stated “it is very gratifying to come here and to be treated as an equal human being. There were times in our past that we were not treated as fully functioning adult people, or even human beings, we were seen as childish, our mental capacity was not equal to that of the western mind, and not so many years later it is refreshing to be able to come and share our stories on an equal footing.”