The next edition will take place from August 6 to 15, 2024.
The First Peoples’ Festival only screens Montreal premieres.
If your film has had or will have a public screening in Montreal before August 2024, we regret to inform you that we cannot select it.
That said, we do accept all short, medium, and feature-length films directed by an Indigenous filmmaker from Canada that had a Montreal screening in 2023-2024, as these works are eligible for the APTN Award.
Witi Ihimaera in Montreal
The great Maori filmmaker Merata Mita (1942-2010) came to Montreal in 2003 at the invitation of First Peoples’ Festival, when a retrospective of her films was presented at the Cinémathèque québécoise. In 2023, another major figure in Maori culture will honour us with her presence: author Witi Ihimaera. Merata Mita was producer, interviewer and consultant for a 1997 documentary that portrays the already famous writer. It’s this film that we’re offering online: Witi Ihimaera intimate talks to us about his art; we accompany him to his family; we follow him to the great ceremonial house of Rongopai de Waituhi, (which holds such a large place in his works) and we travel to Menton, France, to the Kathleen Mansfield Memorial; then we find him at the University of Auckland with his colleagues and students.