Dir. Seth Scriver, Pete Scriver

Rate: Unclassified 15+

“Once we decided to embrace the narrative divergences, the vision for the project fell into place — it became a family portrait.” *

What started as a seven-month project to record seven stories told by his brother Pete Scriver – whom Seth crowns the greatest storyteller he has ever known – grew into nine years’ worth of audio recordings, animated into a colourful and whimsical illustration of family, extended family and community. It is also a film about respecting tradition, caring for water and land, understanding the future through the past, and growing up.

Co-directed by half-brothers Seth and Pete Scriver, the film is a smorgasbord of stories about life and people in Shamattawa, a remote First Nations reserve in northern Manitoba, Canada. Their long conversations, often recorded in Pete’s living room or over interprovincial phone calls, unfold alongside reminiscences among family members, encounters with neighbours, supernatural tales and recollections of dreams. The documentary is about these stories as much as it is about the making of the documentary, especially the countless interruptions – flushing toilet, babbling toddlers, video games and an orchestra of 16 barking dogs – that persistently seep into the recordings. The directors ended up keeping these disruptions in the narrative, where they become part of the film’s charm.

Humour and kaleidoscopic imagination animate every frame, even in scenes touching on grief, police violence, unresolved land settlements, loss of nature and the over-incarceration of Indigenous people.

In the film’s opening sequence, Seth rings Pete about the grant they have received to make a movie. Scribbled on a notepad is Seth’s vision for the project: “funny, beautiful, spiritual, political, complex, simple and true”. The film has clearly achieved all of this.

* Seth Scriver, Peter Scriver, “Related Images: Endless Cookie”, MUBI Notebook Column, 17 Apr 2026