In Focus - A doc as powerful as its subject

indians drown
the family finds out
happens everyday
this land floods
with dead indians
this river swells
freezes
breaks open
cold arms of ice
welcomes indians

That poem, stark white against a black background and accompanied by gnawing silence appears at the beginning of a new National Film Board offering. It dissolves gradually and cleverly until the only remaining words reveal the title of the film, This River.

The opening is appropos because it perfectly captures the stark and simple mood of the film.

This review is a bit unique for YFF In Focus because This River has not appeared at a past Yorkton Film Festival. In fact, it has not yet been entered in the upcoming festival, although likely will be. In fact, it has not even been released to the public yet.

This River is an interesting documentary in that it eschews most of the traditional trappings of a documentary, such as names and dates and events.

In fact, it is almost devoid of the normal W5 of documentary journalism.

What we do know is that some people in a boat named “Drag the Red” are searching the river looking for something, presumably missing indigenous people.

The film is long on mood and short on details, almost certainly by design.

It is a lament for the loss of the central role the Red River plays in community life. A requiem for a life-sustaining artery forgotten and ignored, polluted and only paid attention to “when it becomes a crime scene, and sometimes not even then,” as put by one unnamed woman in the doc whose brother we later find out went missing only to be found downriver six months later.

In the absence of information, we are forced to focus on the virtually futile task of dragging a huge dynamic river such as the Red; on the anonymity of the almost 1,200 indigenous women missing and murdered between 1980 and 2012; on the pain of the people in the boats and on the banks not only for their loss, but, perhaps more poignantly, in not knowing the fate of their loved ones.

And always their is the backdrop of the river, powerful and calm, relentlessly moving as the volunteers who drag the river and search the shores do everyday between May and October.

This River also has an accompanying Instagram project and Facebook page, something new for the NFB, documenting the work of the grassroots organizations Drag the Red and Bear Clan Patrol that patrol the neigbourhoods of Winnipeg and search the Red in response to the problem of people missing from their communities.

Created by author and fimmaker Katherena Vermette and NFB producer Alicia Smith and called “What Brings us Here,” the online companion to the film combines photographs and stories of the volunteers and will run through November.

Katherena Vermette is an award-winning Métis writer of poetry, fiction and children’s literature who lives in Winnipeg.

Alicia Smith is a producer for the NFB in Winnipeg, where she works with filmmakers and artists to create documentary, animation and interactive audiovisual works.

This River has been honoured with the Coup de coeur du jury award at the Festival Présence autochtone/Montréal First Peoples Festival.