ALFF 2021 Opening Film: Beans

This screening took place on Friday, February 5, 2021 at 5:45 pmYukon Arts Centre

This event will be followed by a live, moderated virtual Q&A with the writer, director; Tracey Deer. Hosted by filmmaker and actor, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.

Whitehorse musician, Jeremy Parkin, will open the event a live music set from 5:45pm to 6pm.

Twelve-year-old Beans is on the edge: torn between innocent childhood and reckless adolescence; forced to grow up fast and become the tough Mohawk warrior she needs to be during the Oka Crisis, the turbulent Indigenous uprising that tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.

Beans skillfully navigates the nuances of this friction to deliver a compelling, important message on self-identity in a broad societal context. Similar to how Alanis Obomsawin blazed a trail for authentic Indigenous onscreen narratives with Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Deer forges her own creative path to explore the harrowing events at Kahnawá:ke that are rooted in her own experience as a teenager coming of age during the Oka Crisis.

Content advisories: racialized violence, implied sexual violence

Winner of Best Canadian Feature at VIFF 2020
Selected one of TIFF Top Ten Canadian films for 2020
Second Runner-up, TIFF People’s Choice Award

“With its sensitive portrayal of internal and community conflicts gleaned from lived experience, Deer’s film blazes a new trail for the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers.”
- RAVI SRINIVASAN, TIFF