Get a “child’s eye view” of the world in Ninan Auassat: We, the Children, one of the Canadian documentary highlights of 2024. The film, which won Best Canadian Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival and closed Montreal’s RIDM where it won the Magnus Isaacson Award, is now streaming for free from the NFB.
Directed by Kim O’Bomsawin (Call Me Human), Ninan Auassat observes daily life for young people among the Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree, and Innu First Nations. It’s a refreshingly intimate and adult-free tale as various kids and teens share their perspectives about what it means to come of age in contemporary First Nations communities.
O’Bomsawin lets the kids do the talking here as she observes various young people passing the time after school or making the most of lazy summer days. The kids bike, fish, make snacks, and do their make-up. Sometimes indirectly and sometimes through direct-address confessions, O’Bomsawin’s participants share their hopes, anxieties, and perspectives regarding the troubles they face or the family histories they carry. At no point does she ever let adults speak for them, though. They are their own experts.
These are organic views about their present and future, with several kids taking on the role of mentor and caregiver for their young siblings. It’s a hopeful portrait that resolutely looks forward as each young person considers the future: what they hope to be career-wise or how they see themselves as a parent, if having kids is something on their horizon.
“There aren’t any big moments or grand revelations in Ninan Auassat, but perhaps that’s the point. O’Bomsawin lets these young people be agents of their own stories. She draws upon a collective of experiences, reflecting a range of perspectives connected by an embrace of roots, culture, and community,” said POV in its review of the film. “The three townships offer characters themselves as the crisp cinematography by Hugo Gendron observes with a natural eye the environments that inform these kids’ identities. It’s a refreshingly chill slice-of-life portrait that lets young people share their perspectives through their own terms. They gamely embrace that responsibility too.”
