Writer-director Tracey Deer (Mohawk Girls) here draws inspiration from her own childhood to tell the story of an ambitious Indigenous girl coming of age in the terrible cauldron of the Oka Crisis in the summer of 1990. Nicknamed Beans, she and her family are living an ordinary life in Kanehsatà:ke when a crisis is triggered by the mayor of Oka wanting to expand the local golf course onto a Mohawk sacred site. Protests, escalating tensions, blockades, and the arrival of the Canadian Armed Forces soon result in an anxious, dangerous summer. Skillfully merging newsreel footage of the time with the fictional story of Beans trying to have a normal adolescent experience (first love, finding her voice, etc) in the midst of the armed standoff, Deer’s impressive and deeply moving first feature film carefully calibrates the raw, visceral realities of the standoff itself with Beans’s own getting of wisdom, personally and politically. It also highlights the disgraceful racist attitudes and injustices visited upon Indigenous people in Canada. Beans achieves a remarkable dramatic power, bolstered by a breakout performance by Kiawentiio as the fiercely intelligent, vulnerable, and defiant heroine.

- Tom McSorley, Stephanie Berrington

Screening

Thursday, March 11 - Friday, March 12

Festival Opening Film