Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)

ᐊᑕᓈᕐᔪᐊᑦ

Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.

Date of release
2002-02-01
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (84)
Runtime
2h 52m
Genres
Fantasy, Drama
Director
Zacharias Kunuk

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $5.2M
  • Budget: CA$2M
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 1. Including: Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Award for Best Motion Picture; Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a 2001 Canadian epic film directed by Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and produced by his company Isuma Igloolik Productions. It was the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language.

Production

The film is set in Igloolik ("place of houses") in the Eastern Arctic wilderness at the dawn of the first millennium. The names of Atanarjuat and his brother first appeared in writing in the journals of the explorer Captain George Lyon, who took part in a British expedition to search for the Northwest Passage in 1821–23. The Inuit believe the story of Atanarjuat to be more than five centuries old.

Writer Paul Apak Angilirq, director Zacharias Kunuk, and many others on the production team had heard the Atanarjuat legend when they were young. Over the course of five years, Angilirq interviewed seven elders for their versions of the story and combined them into one treatment. The final script was developed by the team of Angilirq, Norman Cohn (producer and cinematographer), Kunuk, Herve Paniaq (tribal elder), and Pauloosie Qulitalik.

Despite the emphasis on accuracy, the film takes liberties with the original Inuit myth: "At the film's core is a crucial lie", wrote Justin Shubow in The American Prospect, which is that the original legend ended in a revenge killing, whereas in the film Atanarjuat stops short of shedding blood.

After Isuma applied to Telefilm Canada in spring 1998 for financial support, plans were made to begin filming in Igloolik, Nunavut in April. The month was important because April is typically the only time of year in Northern Canada when camera equipment could film winter scenes without malfunctioning due to cold.

Due to difficulty with funding, Isuma instead successfully appealed for support of the National Film Board of Canada. Although the NFB had abandoned fiction, Isuma argued that in documenting Inuit mythology, Atanarjuat was similar to a documentary film. The budget was approved at $1.96 million.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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