Filmmaker Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized, which opens the 30th edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival this week, profiles a tireless advocate for indigenous rights as they approach a crossroads in their life.
Twice Colonized follows Aaju Peter, a Greenlandic Inuk lawyer currently who has resided in Nunavut since relocating there in the early 1980s. As a child, Peter was separated from her family and schooled in Denmark rather than in her own community. While Denmark didn’t technically have residential schools in the way that Canadians know them, the goal was generally the same: to rob indigenous peoples of their own cultures and communities under the veil of assimilation.
Alluna, who takes an observational approach to capturing Peter’s life, captures her subject at a fraught point in her life. Aaju has just lost her son to suicide, and is struggling to break away from an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. Amid all this chaos, Peter redoubles her efforts to try and create an indigenous people’s forum, while working on the book this film gets its title from on the experiences of colonized peoples.
Twice Colonized takes a considerable amount of time to come into sharper focus, but Peter is an exceptional and knowledgable subject to observe. Like Angry Inuk before it (another collaboration with this film’s producer Althea Arnaaquq-Baril), Twice Colonized does an exceptional job of breaking down colonizer mindsets and diving deeply into trauma informed behaviours across generations. Peter’s life and advocacy might actually be too much to fit into a single film, but as a primer on the continuing indigenous struggle to reclaim culture, language, and land, Twice Colonized is another great addition to a growing number of works on the subject.
Thursday, April 27, 2023 – 6:30 pm – Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema (OPENING NIGHT FILM)
Friday, April 28, 2023 – 5:30 pm – Isabel Bader Theatre
Monday, May 1, 2023 – 3:30 pm – TIFF Bell Lightbox 1
Twice Colonized also opens properly at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Friday, May 12, 2023. It also expands to Sudbury Indie Cinema in Sudbury, ON and Bytowne Cinema in Ottawa on Friday, May 12, to Vancity in Vancouver on May 16, and Winnipeg Cinematheque on May 31.
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