In order to put to rest a long standing cycle of repression, they must revisit the place of living memories and intergenerational trauma to face events which the land remembers. The duration of the narrative is told through the unknowable green glades of wilderness, and a bending timeline which places the past, present, and future at equal footing.

The truth is, the scariest thing about the film is never the monsters or the ghosts. Not really at least. Of course, Hannam’s spirits are hard to look at, but largely un-touchable, and silent. They only hurt insofar as memories do. What is truly affecting in the film are the spectres of colonial violence, which quietly release themselves like a gasket through the film’s 80 minute runtime. The work places whispers of interpersonal conflict and memories replayed at equal weight to the illusory beings of the narrative. Balancing a tone that is at once touchingly personal and mysteriously folkloric, Sk+te’kmujue’katik contextualizes the nuances of intergenerational trauma through a grounded story of queerness and familial resilience, and a narrative informed by Mi’kmaq traditions of oral storytelling.

“Traditional stories that are told by oral storytellers have a cadence, or rhythm, that’s rooted in place and an understanding of the world that, I won’t say supersedes, but it’s different from a mainstream concept of how time works.” Bretton describes, when asked about the unique pacing of the film. “It’s more rooted in the notion of continuance— things are growing, changing, dying and growing and changing again. There’s a cycle to things, there’s a season.” 

The film contains seasons too, of the past and present. Much of the narrative takes place in the latent state between knowing and understanding, between younger versions of the Mise’l and Antle and their adult selves; as such the film finds solace and voice through moments of tenderness that cut through complex, sometimes hard to watch sequences of violence. Which is why community has remained an important part of Bretton’s process, as a director managing a real crew, and while realizing the more nuanced narratives of their films, which are often very personal. They note that through the more complicated sequences of the film, it was important to them that they had someone performing medicinal smudges, which were available as well to the crew. 

“You begin to build a language; not just a shot language but a language of communication [on set]. It becomes sort of meta. This film, and largely most of the work that I do is about relationships— you know, holistic views of relationships between family, between community, between land and people. And then above that there’s like the relationships that we’re building as filmmakers, as teams working together. It’s layers upon layers —there’s kind of like this separate ecosystem of the set as well as the story.” 

Bretton also viewed the filmmaking process as an opportunity for forms of outreach: bringing the art of film to indigenous communities and youth across Turtle Island. Their casting process for the film sought out those across colonial borders to apply for casting calls. Bretton also worked within local indigenous communities to cast non-actors who may not otherwise have access to the filmmaking process. Bretton hopes that in  bringing the process of filmmaking to these spaces, they will work to inspire an already proliferating generation of filmmakers, telling their own stories. 

“The work that I do, I see it as a stepping stone for the younger voices, younger indigenous filmmakers. Hopefully this has cleared a little bit of the path, that they can continue down and explore [filmmaking] in different ways — in better ways— that they can reach places I can’t reach or have ideas that I can’t imagine.”

Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At The Place of Ghosts) is in theatres May 8th.