Animated documentary bite-sized chunk of family life

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

At the close of the Hot Docs Festival in May, in a field of dozens of live-action films, it was the animated feature Endless Cookie that took home the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary, a prize determined by audience poll.
Endless Cookie
• Directed by Seth Scriver and Peter Scriver
• Dave Barber Cinematheque
• 97 minutes
• Opens Friday, runs to June 22
It was no small achievement for co-directing brothers Seth Scriver, 47, a seasoned artist and animator, and Peter Scriver, 62, a man of many talents, including carver, trapper and poet.
Peter, who is of white/Cree lineage, lives in Shamattawa First Nation in Northern Manitoba, 744 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Seth, who is white, is based in the city of his birth, Toronto.
The urban/wilderness dynamic between them yields material that is powerful and relevant.
But still … a documentary? The film is, after all, a cartoon, and one that is flagrantly impressionistic when it comes to hard-nosed reality. Peter's daughter Cookie, for example, is drawn as an actual chocolate-chip cookie; his dog Nutty is portrayed as Mr. Peanut.
The overall look of the film suggests an underground comic come to life.
Seth Scriver admits, when the film — which debuted at Sundance 2025 and opened imagineNATIVE 2025 — was presented at Hot Docs, the brothers were surprised it was so fervently embraced by the documentary realm.
'It was funny. We weren't trying to make a (documentary) genre film. It was more like … What is this?' he says.
But he and his brother grew to accept the classification.
'It's a documentary because it's real stories. It's like a real family portrait, even though it seems unbelievable. Most of it is based in some reality,' Seth says.
Most of the action is set in Shamattawa, where Seth interviews Peter about his life, including their lives together, stemming from a shared coming-of-age in Toronto, where their white father ran a vintage clothing shop in Kensington Market.
In contrast to the crazy streets of '80s-era urban Toronto, the scenes in Shamattawa are linked into a familial community, especially Peter's sizable brood of nine children.
And therein lies the film's distinction.
Supplied
It took Seth Scriver nine years to animate the movie.
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It took Seth Scriver nine years to animate the movie.
When Seth originally discussed the movie with his brother, the idea was to make a film that would just take a couple of years to finish.
It ended up being nine years in the making. Part of the reason is that Seth animated the film almost entirely by himself.
But also, the project transformed when Seth realized he couldn't make a conventional animation with typically pristine audio.
'Originally, when we started, it was going to be straight-up good recording with no interruption, but Pete lives in a four-bedroom house with nine kids and 16 dogs, so it's insane to try to record anything,' says Seth.
Supplied
Peter Scriver is a trapper, carver and poet.
Supplied
Peter Scriver is a trapper, carver and poet.
'So eventually, we gave into the insanity and let it go.'
Endless Cookie presents a picture of Indigenous life that veers away from the sombre, serious depictions prevalent in most films that take on the subject. The kids are funny and, cartoon distortion notwithstanding, real. They even contribute their own creativity to the mix with both animation and music.
'It's not for everyone, but we've been really lucky that it's been embraced so much, and people can relate to it,' Seth says. 'Because everyone has crazy families.'
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Randall KingReporter
In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.
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