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How an Indigenous documentary captured the hearts of film festival attendees
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Endless Cookie arrives in theatres this week, after charming audiences at film festivals all over North America. Canadians Seth and Peter Scriver created the animated documentary about their relationship as half-brothers, as Seth is white and Peter is Indigenous.
Today on Commotion, Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with Swampy Cree filmmaker Sonya Ballantyne and Cree author David A. Robertson about the power of the animation and non-linear storytelling in Endless Cookie, and how the film affected them.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: [This documentary] does not have a linear narrative whatsoever. David, can you tell me a little bit about how it tells the story?
David: There's definitely a lot of Indigenous elements to the storytelling here in this documentary. It's definitely an absurdist film — the experience of the characters, you see them in this non-sequitur way in various situations. If you look at the heart of Indigenous storytelling — what I've seen, especially with elders and knowledge keepers telling stories — is that it engages, first of all, multiple senses and emotions: you come in and out of the main points and themes, you leave something, go off on a tangent, but you always kind of come back to it, you always return to it to make this really profound point.
And that's what this documentary does over and over again. It has these moments that you kind of leave — maybe you're interrupted by somebody flushing a toilet in the house somewhere — and then you come back midway through and you're back on this guy getting his hand stuck in a trap, and then you leave again. And it all leads into this really profound final point this documentary makes about storytelling, about knowledge keepers and about the relationship between the past and the present. So it is absurdist. It is non-linear. But it also is, I think, really a great example of the beauty of Indigenous storytelling.
Elamin: This is also a documentary that doesn't shy away from hard things to talk about. Pete talks about his daughter who died by suicide. There are frequent references to residential schools. What did you think of the way that the documentary wove those stories into the movie, Sonya?
Sonya: I love to look at the Indigenous experiences as a pizza, and racism is like the pepperoni on that pizza. It's not the full experience of being Indigenous, but it's a large part of it. And I really love the way they presented [hard things], especially Pete's daughter's suicide. Despite the content, it is not presented in a sad way just because they're honouring her by remembering her, saying that she's riding her motorbike in heaven and stuff like that. It was just so touching for me to see because, in any other culture, suicide is talked about with such darkness and reverence, but here it's like, they just bring it up momentarily by saying, "Oh, yeah, this things I made for Jess when she took her life." And I was like, "What?" I just remember how that hits you. And then you see this beautiful little animation piece they make to honour her. And I'm like, "Oh, that was just so beautiful to see." And I love the way they still talk about her, like she's still around.
I remember being so hesitant to watch the movie just because I was so turned off by the animation style. Like I was saying before we got on air, I demand beauty in my content. My father-in-law was repeatedly trying to get me to watch it, and I'm like, "I don't know if I want to watch it." But I was so glad when I was finally able to see it and just feel this connection. Despite the animation, I've never felt this seen in something as I felt in this one. And it just shows so much of my childhood and my background that I was like, "I really hope everybody gets to see this because it captures something of the heart of being Indigenous." And I hope a lot of people see it — or more people see it now that it's in theatres.
