OPENING NIGHT! Fort York
THURSDAY, June 22, 2023

ᑎᐱᐢᑳᐃ ᓇᑐᐸᓃᒐᑫᐊᐧᐠ
(Night Raiders)

With the short film Wakening

Saskatchewan-to-Toronto filmmaker Danis Goulet is TOPS’ 2023 Spotlight Filmmaker, with a double bill of her work featured as the Opening Night programme for this summer season. Goulet’s short film Wakening (2013) and her award-winning feature début ᑎᐱᐢᑳᐃ ᓇᑐᐸᓃᒐᑫᐊᐧᐠ (Night Raiders) (2021) are together an Indigenous futurist wake-up call for the present and the future we are headed toward at light speed. Night Raiders is a dystopian sci-fi thriller about a mother’s (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) search for her daughter (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), taken captive by a state-run institution.

Addressing urgent themes of settler colonialism, social inequalities, virus outbreaks, and climate change, these films force us to engage with challenging issues set just far enough in the future to masquerade as fiction, while still evoking the very real pasts and presents of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island. Despite these bleak portraits of the present by way of future worlds, Goulet centres her films in a place of hope: one where family, community, mythology, and traditional practices realign. 

This opening night celebration of Goulet’s work  takes place at Fort York National Historic Site, setting the stage for TOPS’ Another World programme. This series invites audiences to engage with our collective past and present, and to participate in the hopeful imagination of future worlds.

Toronto Outdoor Picture Show’s Another World events at Fort York, Christie Pits Park, Corktown Common, and Bell Manor Park are on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. This land is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Tkarónto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

This screening will be presented with optional pre-recorded Audio Description available for blind, low vision, or visually impaired audience members. More information about this accessibility feature is available at TOpictureshow.com/audio. Other accessibility features available at TOPS events, including open captioning, are outlined at TOpictureshow.com/accessibility.