Whistler Film Festival: Jules Arita Koostachin draws on Cree cultural practices in Broken Angel
The multidisciplinary artist’s feature has its Western Canadian premiere at the 2022 fest
Broken Angel.
Whistler Film Festival presents Broken Angel on December 1 at 8:45 pm at Maury Young Arts Centre and
December 2 at 11:30 am Village 8 Cinemas - Theatre 7
A WOMEN’S SHELTER is a second home to Angel, a Cree single mother fleeing a violent and emotionally vicious partner in Cree filmmaker Jules Arita Koostachin’s new feature film, Broken Angel. In this safe space on her reservation, Angel (Sera-Lys McArthur, Monkey Beach) takes part in ceremonies like smudging and circle, albeit reluctantly; empty and afraid, she feels little connection to her culture. With the support of her foster mother, who runs the shelter (Koostachin), and other Indigenous women, Angel eventually becomes more rooted in her Indigenous identity and stronger in her soul.
A member of the Attawapiskat First Nation, Koostachin made the film in honour of “all warrior Iskwewak”—women, givers of life. Deeply dedicated to InNiNeWak (Cree) storytelling, she also drew on her own experience working in social services, as the former director and acting CEO of an emergency shelter for Indigenous women, to write the script.
“It’s still a taboo subject,” Koostachin says in a phone interview with Stir in advance of the Broken Angel’s Western Canadian premiere at Whistler Film Festival. “If you’re in an abusive situation, so often people say, ‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’ It’s not that simple. I was inspired to tell an inside story. A lot of people really don’t know that world.”
Broken Angel features the eldest of Koostachin’s four children, Asivak Koostachin (playing Angel’s ex-boyfriend), and a cameo by her mother, a “warrior of the Canadian Residential school system”. The film was years in the making. Koostachin had the idea for it in mind when she began taking nighttime screenwriting classes after her twins were born. (They’re now 16; her other kids are 28 and 26.) She was undaunted when it came to bringing the film to life despite so many early challenges.
“I kept hearing ‘No,” Koostachin says. “At the time, we weren’t really having the #MeToo discussion and we weren’t discussing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. I kept hearing things like ‘There’s no audience for it’ and ‘Women are not a big enough market.’ There were a lot of barriers. I finally thought ‘I’ve got to make this friggin’ film!” I just kept going because it’s a really important story.
“As a woman, you kind of get used to hearing ‘No’, so you find ways to go over, under, around—you get resourceful,” she adds. “We just do what we have to do to create.”
Broken Angel was selected by the Toronto International Film Festival Filmmakers Lab in 2018 and the Whistler Screenwriting Lab (aka Praxis) in 2019. With a limited budget, Koostachin and her crew had just 12 days to make the film, which happened to fall during last year’s atmospheric river. While shooting on the unceded, ancestral territory of the Kwantlen and Katzie First Nations in Langley, they faced everything from power outages to falling trees.
A member of the Directors Guild of Canada with a Ph.D. from UBC’s Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, where she focused on Indigenous documentary, Koostachin sees storytelling (whether through dramatic film, documentary, photography, creative writing, poetry, installation, or other artistic practices) as a vital means to share cultural beliefs, values, and protocols. It’s also a way to ensure her ancestors’ voices continue to be heard. She weaves Indigenous practices into Broken Angel’s characters’ actions and lives. For instance, when wise-for-her-age Tanis (a terrific Brooklyn Letexier Hart) gets her period, she meets an elder, a woman, in a dream. “In our customs, when we get our period for the first time, we believe the old woman is coming to walk with us,” Koostachin says. “It was important to include that one of our cultural beliefs is that our aunties or ancestors walk with you.”
Jules Arita Koostachin and her son, Asivak Koostachin, on the set of Broken Angel.
Broken Angel is part of a trilogy, which will feature many of the same actors. Of all the various genres Koostachin works in, she sees film as having a unique power and appeal.
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