Nunavut’s Zach Kunuk takes home a Genie award

Nunavut filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, director of the prize-winning feature film, Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner, won a Genie award in the short documentary category March 8 in Toronto.

Every year at its Genie awards ceremony, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television gives out 14-pound bronze figurines, known as “Etrogs,” to honour “outstanding achievements in Canadian cinema.”

For Sirmilik, a short film about Nunavut’s Sirmilik national park near Pond Inlet, Kunuk joined forces with musicians who included Cambridge Bay singer Tanya Tagaq.

Sirmilik was part of a larger project, called The National Parks Project, which saw 13 Canadian filmmakers visit various wilderness regions in Canada for five days in June 2011 to show “the power of nature, the magic of art.”

The resulting series of short films became The National Parks Project, which Toronto’s HotDocs festival praised as “a one-of-a-kind documentary experience.”

National Parks Project: Sirmilik from ANDINO PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.