The animated hybrid documentary Endless Cookie makes a lot of great points about the nature of extended family and Canada’s fraught relationship to indigenous peoples in the most relaxed, visually inventive way possible. To be honest, Endless Cookie doesn’t have much of an overarching point at all, acting mostly as an excuse for a younger and older brother to collaborate on a project that’s part history and part “I can’t believe someone paid me to do this” goof. But what presents itself outwardly as a freewheeling, surreally animated selection of anecdotes, stories, and observations is able to speak eloquently about the indigenous experience, both in big Canadian cities and on rural reservations.
White Torontonian Seth Scriver – the director, who voices himself – has been given an arts grant for his next project, a collaboration with his Cree half-brother, Peter, who lives in the (far) Northern Manitoba fly-in community of Shamattawa. When he was eleven and Seth was just a little baby, Pete moved to Toronto, where he stayed until he was thirty. Although Pete struggled with alcoholism and legal troubles while in Toronto, he made a huge impression on Seth, who calls his sibling the greatest storyteller he knows. The point of Endless Cookie is to spend time with Pete at his home – which he shares with nine kids, sixteen dogs, and only four bedrooms between them – and get him to tell some stories that he can later animate in his signature, cartoonish style.
Endless Cookie is the first feature from Seth Scriver since his underrated and award winning 2013 collaboration with Shayne Ehman, Asphalt Watches, and his signature style has been missed on screen. Scriver’s images are colourful, bold, and strange to behold. They’re cartoonish in the extreme, with some characters getting onscreen avatars that are talking socks, rotis, and plenty of clowns, all with highly detailed buttocks. It’s the kind of thing that a passing observer might write off as childish and unpolished until they realize the sheer amount of thought and detail that has gone into every frame of Endless Cookie. Whether the action being observed is taking place at the only supermarket in a small town or a dingy 1980s crust punk club, Endless Cookie bursts with endless innovation. Even something as simple as the hammering of a nail becomes a visually dynamic adventure.
And Seth Scriver is nothing if not self aware. Story structure and meeting deadlines are not a strong suit with him. As shown in Endless Cookie (which also boasts the subtitle Caca-nada), the story map of the film is pure, unhinged, indecipherable chaos, and what was funded to be a seven month long project from start to finish ends up taking nearly a decade to complete. (When the interview process for the film began, Pete’s equally artistic minded daughter Kristin – a.k.a. Cookie – was ten. By the end, she’s nineteen.) On top of that, recording Pete telling stories in a house with where a bunch of other people of varying ages live comes with its own unique set of logistical challenges. This kind of shagginess adds an endearing layer of authenticity to Endless Cookie. To some degree, Seth has to provide something to show his benefactors, but he’s also clearly forging ahead because he loves what he’s working on.
The love and admiration Seth shows towards Pete is boundless at every turn, and their strong bond is the reason Endless Cookie exists at all. Even when the Scrivers cut away to seemingly random gags that take shots at the likes of reality television, video games, skittish RCMP officers, and the perils of getting moneymen to grant extensions, they always bring things back to the bond shared between the brothers. It’s a full family affair, with Pete’s children and their father, Stewart, chipping in to lend their voices and personalities to the project. Endless Cookie feels like a vehicle for Seth to spend time with Pete in the same way the elder sibling hung around Toronto from the 70s to the 90s. Although the live in different worlds, they’re always able to come together as if no time had passed at all.
The effortless personal shorthand between Seth and Pete allows for the latter’s stories to take on a deeper meaning, and for the duo to broach a wide range of indigenous issues amid a trippy, foul mouthed, and deceptively crude aesthetic. Issues surrounding indigenous incarceration rates in Canada and the lack of clean drinking water in First Nations territories are delivered through a clever bit of anthropomorphism. The inherent racism at the heart of many members of law enforcement is played for outlandish, broad laughs, but a story of a sentient trophy walking around with a rifle and suffering from grief deftly rides the razor’s edge between gut busting humour and shattering tragedy. Seth’s attempt to describe residential schooling to his own baby goes about as well as one might expect, but it’s one of the most poignant scenes in the film. Endless Cookie never loses sight of the big picture, but the images and their delivery are refreshingly unique.
Even those expecting the unexpected from Endless Cookie might find themselves scratching their heads or adrift in the images from time to time. But the film (which premiered earlier this year at Sundance and won the Rogers Audience Award at Hot Docs this spring) boasts so much mirth and good will that the strangeness becomes grounded in universal feelings of warmth and togetherness. The surreal becomes identifiable and relatable. The Scrivers’ observations about the disconnect between indigenous peoples and the rest of Canada are pointed and passionate, but the film on its own will likely be more remembered for being a deeply personal work of love and affection, free from audience or external judgment. It’s a weird kind of hang out movie where the door is always open, either to engage directly or to just let all the strangeness wash over the viewer.
Endless Cookie opens at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto,VIFF Centre in Vancouver, The Vic in Victoria, Dave Barber Cinematheque in Winnipeg, Metro Cinemas in Edmonton, and Cinémathèque Québécoise on Friday, June 13, 2025. It expands to ByTowne Cinema in Ottawa on Saturday, June 21, and to further locations across Canada throughout the summer.
