Aulajut Nunavut International Film Festival packs Iqaluit theatre

It was standing room only at Iqaluit’s Astro Theatre on Wednesday night as the sixth annual Aulajut Nunavut International Film Festival kicked off with five short circumpolar films.

Organized by the Nunavut Bilingual Education Society, the festival continues at the theatre and other venues in the city through Saturday.

“Art films, bold films, and culture films all abound,” said festival co-ordinator Jamesie Fournier, in an email following Wednesday’s screenings.

Historical films are also on the theatre bill, beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.

“We will be featuring a retrospective of a National Film Board animation workshop, Sikusilarmiut, that operated in Kinngait during the 1970s,” Fournier said.

Some of the footage has been publicly circulated but other excerpts from the workshop were only recently digitized, he said.

The short films will be followed by the Norwegian film, The Tundra Within Me.

More short films are scheduled at the theatre on Friday starting at 6 p.m., followed by Starwalker, a 2025 First Nations two-spirit drag musical from B.C.

Panel discussions are scheduled to be held in the Baffin Room at Frobisher Inn on Saturday afternoon.

The Nunavut Children’s Festival, which is part of the event, will take place at the theatre at 3 p.m. Saturday.

The Aulajut festival wraps up with They Have to Hear Us: Canada’s Duty to Consult Inuit, Zacharias Kunuk’s 2025 feature documentary about Canadian Arctic resource extraction and the Crown’s constitutional duties to Inuit.

The festival will travel to Kinngait and Igloolik later this month. Films are scheduled at the Kinngait community hall at 6 p.m. nightly from April 16 to 18 and the Igloolik community hall at 6 p.m. nightly from April 23 to 25.

All festival events are free to attend.