Boil Alert

This screening took place on Friday, February 16, 2024 at 6:00 pmYukon Theatre

This urgent documentary about activist Layla Staats shows the faces and personal stories behind the struggle of First Nations reserves to receive a basic human right: drinkable water.

In this urgent, hybrid, border-crossing documentary, activist Layla Staats is our guide to the struggle of First Nations reserves to receive a basic human right — drinkable water. Canadians often hear statistics about this: there are currently 32 long-term boil-water advisories in 28 communities throughout the country. But this film puts faces and personal stories to the numbers, in a very accessible way.

Boil Alert launches with a dramatic recreation of Staats’s life: her personal struggles, and reconnection with relatives and her Haudenosaunee roots. We then see her learning about the impacts of boil-water advisories, water toxicity, and environmental damage on Indigenous communities.

-Kelly Boutsalis, TIFF