Greenland’s Inuk screens in Iqaluit March 11

Here’s the poster announcing Inuk, which will screen at 7:15 p.m. in Iqaluit’s Astro Theatre. (FILE IMAGE)

(Updated, March 11, 11:43 a.m.)

Movie-lovers in Iqaluit will have a treat when the Greenlandic film Inuk screens March 11 in the Astro Theatre — unless a blizzard due to hit the city postpones the event until March 12.

Inuk has already won 20 awards in international film festivals, including “best film,” “best actor,” “best director,” “audience” awards in the United States, France and in Australia.

In Greenland, Inuk sold more tickets than mainstream films like Men in Black III, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hunger Games.

Denmark then submitted the film for consideration in the 2013 Academy Awards’ “Best Foreign Language Film” category.

Directed by Mike Magidson and co-written by Magidson, Ole Jørgen Hammeken and anthropologist Jean Michel Huctin, Inuk tells the story of 16-year-old Inuk, sent from his troubled home in Nuuk to a children’s home in Uummannaq in northern Greenland.

There, he meets Ikuma, a legendary polar bear hunter, who sees his skills mysteriously disappearing. Taking Inuk on his dogsled for the annual hunting trip, they confront fragile sea-ice.

But the most difficult part of the journey turns out to be the one they must make within themselves, information about the film says,

Shot on the sea ice in -30 C, Inuk features the performances of teenagers from the Uummannaq Children’s Home and local hunters, all playing roles close to their real lives.

“Created as an original road-movie on the sea ice, Inuk is both an authentic story of Greenland today and a universal story about the quest for identity, transmission and rebirth after the deepest of wounds,” said Jean-Michel Huctin, Inuk’s co-writer and co-producer.

In Iqaluit, Greenlandic youth and film crew members will also be on hand to “share our film and a piece of Greenlandic culture with you,” he said.

They’re on a North American tour, which kicked off March 7 with three days of screenings at Bright Nights film festival in Montreal.

The group is travelling to Iqaluit thanks to the Danish Embassy and Northwestel, which is sponsoring the Iqaluit screenings.

The 7:15 p.m. evening screening of Inuk at the Astro Theatre is free to members of the public.