![]() | This article needs a plot summary.(July 2021) |
Monkey Beach | |
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![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Loretta Todd |
Written by | Johnny Darrell Andrew Duncan Loretta Todd |
Based on | Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson |
Produced by | Loretta Todd Patti Poskitt Jason James Matthew O'Connor Lisa Richardson |
Starring | Grace Dove Adam Beach Nathaniel Arcand Glen Gould |
Cinematography | Stirling Bancroft |
Edited by | Asim Nurany Fredrik Thorsen |
Music by | Jesse Zubot Russell Wallace, |
Production companies | Mama-oo Productions Reunion Pacific Entertainment |
Release date |
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Running time | 103 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Languages | English Haisla |
Monkey Beach is a 2020 Canadian drama film, directed by Loretta Todd. [1] Her debut narrative feature, the film is an adaptation of Eden Robinson's 2000 novel Monkey Beach . [2]
The film stars Grace Dove as Lisamarie, a young Haisla woman in Kitamaat, British Columbia coming to terms with the mysterious disappearance of her brother Jimmy (Joel Oulette). The film's cast also includes Adam Beach, Nathaniel Arcand, Glen Gould, Tina Lameman and Ta'Kaiya Blaney.
The film premiered at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival. [1]
For The Georgia Straight , Craig Takeuchi wrote that "Although the overall effort may be uneven at times and takes some time to find its way, there’s enough to appreciate here to carry things along, including a scene-stealing Adam Beach as the mischievous Uncle Mick, Lisa’s struggle to reconcile traditional values with the current world, and—needless to say—the evocative setting that pervades the proceedings." [3]
For the Hollywood North Magazine, Shaun Lang wrote, "If my plot summary sounds vague, it’s merely in the service of not spoiling one of the shiniest jewels in the recent wave of Canadian Indigenous Cinema. If The Grizzlies was the Inuit answer to the sports drama, then Monkey Beach is the Haisla response to the Superhero genre. That’s about the closest I can come to categorizing what is truly a spiritually-healing experience whether you’re Haisla or otherwise." [4]
The film swept the feature film awards at the 2020 American Indian Film Festival, winning for Best Picture, Best Director (Todd), Best Actor (Beach), Best Actress (Dove), Best Supporting Actor (Arcand) and Best Supporting Actress (Lameman). [5] At the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2020, Beach was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Canadian Film and Lameman was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian Film. [6]
Todd, Johnny Darrell and Andrew Duncan received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021. [7]
Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.
Helen Shaver is a Canadian actress and film and television director. After appearing in a number of Canadian movies, she received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama In Praise of Older Women (1978). She later appeared in the films The Amityville Horror (1979), The Osterman Weekend (1983), Desert Hearts (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Believers (1987), The Craft (1996),Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996) and Down River (2013). She received another Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress nomination for the 1986 drama film Lost!, and won a Best Supporting Actress for We All Fall Down (2000). Shaver also starred in some short-lived television series, including United States (1980) and Jessica Novak (1981), and from 1996 to 1999 starred in the Showtime horror series, Poltergeist: The Legacy, for which she received a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television nomination.
Nathaniel Arcand is a Canadian actor. He is known for his first major role in the Canadian drama series North of 60, in which for three seasons he played William MacNeil, smart-mouthed and cocky, a troubled, misunderstood teen. In 1997, he was nominated for a Gemini Award in the category "Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Series" for the North of 60 episode "Traces and Tracks."
Monkey Beach is a supernatural mystery novel written by the indigenous Canadian author Eden Robinson. It was published by Vintage Canada in 2000, being Eden's first novel. It was the recipient of the 2001 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, which is given to work by writers from British Columbia, and was a shortlisted nominee for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction.
Loretta Sarah Todd is a Canadian Indigenous film director.
Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers is a Blackfoot and Sámi filmmaker, actor, and producer from the Kainai First Nation in Canada. She has won several accolades for her film work, including multiple Canadian Screen Awards.
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Joel Oulette is a Canadian actor, most noted for his lead role as Jared in the television drama series Trickster. A member of the Cumberland House Cree and Red River Métis nations from Medicine Hat, Alberta, he was cast in the series as his first starring role after supporting performances in the television series Tribal and the films Parallel Minds and Monkey Beach. In February 2021, he starred in S2.E10 of the Netflix Series Two Sentence Horror Stories as an Indigenous man who faces a dark history when he and his girlfriend visit an old west reenactment for their podcast.
Tina Lameman is a Cree actress from Canada. She is most noted for her appearance in the film Monkey Beach, for which she received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2020, and won the award for Best Supporting Actress at the 2020 American Indian Film Festival.
Bad Omen is a 2020 Canadian short drama film, directed by Salar Pashtoonyar. The film stars Fereshta Afshar as Pari, a widowed tailor in Kabul who must find the money to pay for a pair of prescription glasses to keep her job, despite Afghan culture's social stigmatization of widows.
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Portraits from a Fire is the first narrative feature film written and directed by a Tsilhqot'in filmmaker.
The Red Nation Film Festival is a film festival focused on films about indigenous people. The festival was founded in 1995 and is curated by Joanelle Romero.
Be Still is a Canadian drama film, directed by Elizabeth Lazebnik and released in 2021. An adaptation of Janet Munsil's theatrical play of the same name, the film is a biographical portrait of Hannah Maynard, a photographer from Victoria, British Columbia who was an unheralded innovator in the artistic genre of surrealism.
The Vancouver International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film is an annual award, presented by the Vancouver International Film Festival to honour the film selected by a jury as the best Canadian film screened at VIFF that year.