Bones of Crows launches in movie theatres across Canada, starting June 2

Dene/Métis writer-producer Marie Clements will be in Vancouver for Q&As about the film inspired by a Cree matriarch’s true life story

By Gail johnson

Bones of Crows.

BONES OF CROWS is making a wide release all across the country, beginning June 2.

Written, directed, and produced by Dene/Métis artist Marie Clements (Red Snow, The Road Forward), the work is inspired by the true life story of a Cree matriarch named Aline Spears.

It will be screening at Cineplex and Landmark Cinemas Canada.

Post-screening Q&As with cast and crew will take place in Vancouver on opening day: Clements and producer Trish Dolman will be in attendance at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas’ 6:30 pm screening on June 2, while actor Alyssa Wapanatâhk joins producers Christine Haebler and Leena Minifie for the 6:45 pm Cineplex International Village screening.

The film follows Spears’s life journey as she faces and fights against systemic racism, starvation, and abuse. Appearing at different ages by different actors (Summer Testawich, Secwépemc actor Grace Dove, and Carla Rae), she navigates so much injustice and pain with extraordinary grace and strength.

As a child, Spears and her siblings were forcibly removed from their parents while at home and put into the Indian Residential School system. Spears, a gifted pianist, later wound up being part of the war effort as a code talker, using her ancestral language to Canada’s advantage at at time when everywhere else, settlers worked to eradicate it.

Epic in scope and subject matter, Bones of Crows journeys from 1800s Turtle Crossing in Manitoba (home to the Brandon Residential School) to the Vatican in 2009, when a delegation of First Nations representatives from Canada met with Pope Benedict XVI, and numerous places in between.

Clements addresses the horrors and lasting effects of colonial practices on Indigenous people head-on without resorting to unnecessary graphic details. (The film contains scenes that may be triggering to some viewers, especially direct or intergenerational survivors of residential schools.)

Some prominent Vancouverites appear in Bones of Crows, including Margo Kane, founder of Full Circle: First Nations Performance; and musician Jesse Zubot, who composed the work’s haunting score with Wayne Lavallee. Imbued with symbolism, Bones of Crowes has stunning cinematography by Vince Arvidson; think big Prairie sky and vast wind-blown wheat fields.

The highly anticipated theatrical release comes on the heels of a series of free community screenings across the country. The dramatic feature film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022 and was the opening film for the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival. Having screened at many other festivals, the title is currently in Berlin for the European Film Market, showing as part of Perspectives Canada, with international screenings at Mãoriland Film Festival in Ötaki, New Zealand. Bones of Crows is accompanied by a five part mini-series commissioned by CBC/Radio-Canada in association with APTN.

Clements, the founder of production company MGM, which focuses on Indigenous reality, has had her films screen at Cannes, Whistler Film Festival, American Indian Film Festival, and imagineNATIVE Film Festival, among many others. She is now working on feature documentary called We Are Family with the National Film Board and is set to direct Warrior Ride with M1 Films. Clements has received nominations from the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild of Canada for her work.

See Stir’s review of Bones of Crows here .

More information is at https://bonesofcrows.com/.  

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