Igloolik filmmaker’s latest feature to screen at TIFF
“Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)” scheduled to run for Toronto audiences on Sept. 8 and 9 and Sept. 14
Igloolik filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s latest feature “Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)” will be screened at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival in September. Kunuk is pictured here in his Igloolik studio in 2023, a few weeks after wrapping up filming the movie. (File photo by Madalyn Howitt)
Igloolik filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s latest feature film Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) is among eight Indigenous films selected to be screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The 50th annual TIFF, running Sept. 4 to 14, will feature a record number of Indigenous titles, according to a news release from the Indigenous Screen Office.
The Indigenous Screen Office provided $3.5 million to help develop and produce the eight Canadian features, the release said.
Uiksaringitara tells the story of an arranged marriage that goes awry. It’s set in 2000 BC. The film, inspired by ancient Inuit legends, was filmed in 2023 on Igloolik Island.
Featuring an all-Inuit cast and dialogue in Inuktitut, the $3.2-million production was edited in 2024 and screened in Igloolik earlier this year to the hamlet’s 2,000 residents.
The film will run at TIFF following a showing at the Generation 14+ program at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Kunuk co-wrote the film and is its executive producer.
It’s scheduled to be screened at TIFF on Sept. 8 and 9 and Sept. 14 at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre and Scotiabank Theatre.
Single tickets will go on sale to the general public on Aug. 25 and individuals under 25 can sign up for a free pass.
Kunuk has directed five feature films and more than 40 documentaries, all in Inuktitut.
His 2001 feature film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner won the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (Golden Camera) award for best first feature film.
Uiksaringitara – A must see, can’t wait. Zacharias keeps churning out the movies and documentaries, excellent.
Interesting fact, Inuit migrated into the area we call Nunavut 1,000 years ago. At 2,000 years BC this land was occupied by the Tuniit. Is this a Tuniit story, or is the setting closer to the Bering Sea?
Thank you for sharing your traditional knowledge and wisdom of story telling you learned from elders.
Put that fancy degree to work Oh Ima and say something interesting and useful for once…?
Inuit and Tuniit are the same people and of same ancestors . There is oral history of Inuit and Tunniit or Tunirjuat co-existing until after a sickness and change of times. there are artifacts dating back to over 1000 years that named area found from our area alone north Baffin. the official naming of Tuniit according to my late father who passed away in 1984 was the actual name for area and clan of Inuit. if you go to Smithsonian Museum in the states, Aberdeen University of Scotland, Roman catholic Churches especially in Florence, , anglican churches in the UK you will find stolen from our land artifacts claimed by new comers claiming to be from pre-dorset , Thule, and Tuniit that are over 1000 years old and yet we still use the same patterns for clothing and hunting tools to today. They are still all Inuit.
No, this is incorrect and it is shameful but not surprising at all that you have been taught this. DNA evidence shows that the Tuniit (Haplogroup D21a) and Thule (ancestors of modern Inuit, haplogroup A) were distinct groups. (See The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic
‘Science’ August 2014).
Granted, I know ITK has put out a politically motivated fantasy which sounds a lot like yours.
Oral history, on the other hand, tells of ancestral Inuit chasing the Tuniit off the land, even killing them (see ‘Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut’).
I suspect this denial is a way to avoid the reality that your ancestors displaced / ethnically cleansed (others call it genocide) the eastern arctic of its original inhabitants. The technological similarities you claim to show cultural continuity were often borrowed between different arctic cultures and extend back into a deeper past, though some might say technologies were outright stolen from the Tuniit (seal hole hunting and specific types of harpoon heads).
As background for this film, Isuma studios have on You Tube (as of today) nine wonderful episodes documenting how “Uiksaringitara” was filmed, each episode is in Inuktitut and approx. 45 minutes long. Great to watch. (I cannot wait to see this film.) New videos weekly.
In You Tube, search IsumaTV –> Videos
I plan to be at this evening’s (Sept. 8) show in Toronto, and am very much looking forward to it.