Winner, Best Canadian Feature (Hot Docs 2016)

KONELĪNE: our land beautiful is a sensual, cinematic celebration of northwestern British Columbia, and all the dreamers who move across it. This film does not lecture; it surprises with cinematic action and visual poetry. It is a bold experimental film from some of Canada’s leading documentary artists.

Some hunt on the land. Some mine it. They all love it. Set deep in the traditional territory of the Tahltan First Nation, KONELĪNE captures beauty and complexity as one of Canada’s vast wildernesses undergoes irrevocable change. An art film with politics, drama, and humour, KONELĪNE: our land beautiful explores different ways of seeing—and being. A guide outfitter swims her horses across the vast Stikine River. The world’s biggest chopper flies 16,000-pound transmission towers over mountaintops. KONELĪNE‘s characters delight while smashing stereotypes: white hunters carry bows and arrows; members of the Tahltan First Nation hunt out of a pickup with high-powered rifles. There are diamond drillers—both Native and white—and elders who blockade them. There’s a Tahltan son struggling to preserve a dying language, and a white guy who sings “North to Alaska ” to his stuffed moose.

We are very pleased to welcome director Nettie Wild to the Rio Theatre! She will be introducing and participating in post-screening Q&As at our screening on Sunday, December 17.

“A feast for the eyes…in the hands of an expert story teller. KONELĪNE is a wise, humanistic documentary…. a tone poem to a beautiful land and the amazing characters who live in it. I urge you to see it.” (POV Magazine)

“Captures the danger and promise of an inspiring natural world.” (Globe and Mail)