Plot
The film opens with a brief prologue explaining the history of Canadian First Nations children being compelled by law to attend Indian residential schools. In 1969, the prepubescent Aila lives with her father Joseph, mother Anna and younger brother Tyler at the fictional Red Crow Indian Reservation, a Mi'kmaq Indian reserve. Aila's parents consume drugs and alcohol to cope with the abuse they suffered at St. Dymphna's residential school. Tyler is killed by Anna during a drunk driving incident. The grief-stricken Anna dies by suicide while Joseph takes the blame and is imprisoned.
The film fast forwards seven years later to 1976. In her father's absence, the now-teenage Aila takes over her father's drug dealing business in the care of her uncle Burner, who himself consumes and sells drugs. To avoid being sent to St. Dymphna's school, Aila uses the proceeds from the drug money to bribe the corrupt and abusive Indian agent Popper, who runs the school. In flashback scenes, it is show that a younger Popper was bullied by several Mi'kmaq youths including Burner. A younger Joseph comes to his aid but Popper spurns his offer of friendship and develops a hatred for the Indians in the reserve.
One day, Aila's drug money is stolen. Her predicament is complicated when her father Joseph is released from prison and returns to the Red Crow Reserve. Relations between daughter and father are initially frayed; Aila resents her father for not being there, while Joseph is unhappy that his daughter is involved in the drug business. Aila and three friends later hatch a plot to break into St. Dymphna's with the assistance of one of the resident boys, Jujijj, and steal the required money. However, Burner betrays them to Popper, who arrests Joseph on trumped-up property damage charges and sends Aila to St. Dymphna's.
During her induction, Aila is shorn of her long braids and imprisoned in a cell; while she is captive, she witnesses a vision of her brother, who guides her in a dream-state to a mass grave behind St. Dymphna's, exposing the atrocities that occurred there. She is eventually freed by a local resident boy. Seeking revenge against Popper, Aila and her friends don Halloween costumes and break into St Dymphna's. They free Joseph and steal CA$20,000 from Popper's office. After escaping, Aila reconciles with her father, who tells her that she is not to blame for the death of her mother and the cycle of abuse that occurred at St Dymphna's.
However, Popper catches up with them and knocks Joseph down with a rifle butt. Popper attempts to rape Aila but is shot dead by the local resident boy who freed Aila. To protect the young boy and his daughter, Joseph takes the fall for killing Popper. Gisigu, a friend of her grandfather, becomes her mentor and promises to help steer her away from the influence of drug-dealing. Aila also befriends the young boy who saved her and her father from Popper.
Production
Inspiration and mission
In a press material's release following the films announcement, Barnaby noted that he was "one of the rare Indians whose introduction to his heritage on film did not come from a misrepresented stereotype but from another native filmmaker whose subject was a member of [his] own community." This was in reference to documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin's visit to his home community on the Mi'kmaq reserve of Listuguj in 1981; Obomsawin had come to document the resistance of a community member to raids by Sûreté du Québec sparked by conflicts over salmon fishing rights in the area. Barnaby stated that, "from that moment on," having witnessed the man's testimony, he "equated film with social protest, pride and strength." [4] He elaborated:
“If I could sum up a mission statement with one phrase, ‘I want to make being Indian cool again.’ I want to take our images, our lives, our languages and represent them truthfully on screen.” [5]
Conception and development
Rhymes for Young Ghouls was first envisioned in 2010 amid the premiere of Barnaby's short film File Under Miscellaneous at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). [4] CFC Features from the Canadian Film Centre was the first group to support the project in development, followed soon after by the Quebec government's Society for the Development of Cultural Enterprises (SODEC), the Quebec Arts Council, Telefilm, and the Harold Greenberg Fund. [4] In 2012, the film was selected for the Tribeca All-Access Program, providing it with access to workshops and support from industry professionals with the intent of assisting writers from under-represented communities. [6] The writers pitched the script at the Tribeca Film Festival to a jury composed of actors Cuba Gooding Jr., Rosario Dawson, and Gabourey Sidibe, who unanimously voted to award them the Festival's $10,000 Creative Promise Award. [4]
Prospector Films of Montreal produced the film, which was shot from 21 October to 22 November 2012. It was announced to the public on October 23, 2012. [6] The pre-production and production phases took place on the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve and in Montreal. Post-production occurred through the first half of 2013 in Montreal. [4]
Casting and recruitment
The first character to be cast in the film was Mi'kmaq actor and musician Glen Gould, a regular partner of Barnaby's, as Joseph. Out of a pool of 70 actresses from across North America, then 19-year old Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs was chosen to play the role of Aila. Many senior production roles were filled by longtime associates of Barnaby. [4] The cast was made up of several indigenous actors, including Gould, Roseanne Supernault (Métis), as well as Jacobs and Brandon Oakes (Mohawk). [5]
Release and reception
Rhymes for Young Ghouls had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2013. [7] It was then chosen to be screened at TIFF's 13th annual Canada's Top Ten Film Festival in January of the following year. [8] Its first theatrical release was on 31 January 2014 in Toronto. [3] [1] [9] [10] Seville Pictures was responsible for Canadian distribution, with eOne handling international sales. [6]
The film was specially screened at the National Museum of the American Indian on October 30, 2014 with Barnaby and Jacobs in attendance. [5]
Critical Response
Rhymes for Young Ghouls received largely positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a critic approval rating of 88% based on 8 reviews, with an audience rating of 75% based on more than 250 reviews as of 2025. [11]
Upon announcing his retirement in 2023, longtime TIFF programmer and film critic Steve Gravestock listed Rhymes for Young Ghouls among his top three favorite Canadian films to have been screened at the festival, stating that "Jeff was a really unique voice [...] the way he mixed genres to tell a very serious and true story was important." [12]
In popular culture
The film inspired the creation of The Aila Test, later renamed The Ali Nahdee Test after it's creator, Anishinaabe writer Ali Nahdee. [13] [14] Nadhee first formulated the test in Finland in the late 2010s amid the Standing Rock - Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the United States, seeing it as a means of supporting the indigenous cause despite the distance between her and the movement's physical and political center. [15] It is meant to serve a litmus test for analyzing the representation of Indigenous female characters in narrative. Similar to the Bechdel Test, created in 1985 to serve as a means of measuring female representation and agency in storytelling, the test consists of three question, originally specified as follows:
(1) Is she an Indigenous/Aboriginal woman who is a main character;
(2) who does not fall in love with a white man;
(3) and does not end up raped or murdered at any point in the story? [14]
Narratives that pass the test include Barnaby's Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Whale Rider by Niki Caro, Disney's Moana , Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra , and Kisima Inŋitchuŋa's 2014 video game Never Alone . [14] Nadhee explained the name-change as deriving from a sense that she had appropriated the identity of someone else's character for her own purposes. As she described, Barnaby himself had stated that she was "using his work to market [her]self." [13] Finding herself torn by this fact, she chose to formally rename the test and its associated social media handles, and to expand the test to encompass a broader, more comprehensive criteria in April of 2022. According to Nadhee, in order to pass the Ali Nadhee test, a narrative must now have:
- An Indigenous woman who is a main character…This includes ANY existing indigenous group as well as fictional Indigenous-coded characters...This includes trans women / femmes...Must be portrayed by an Indigenous actress if the story is live action
- Who does not fall in love with a white man…Love and sex are not the same thing...Can fall in love with a white woman / Enby
- Who isn’t raped and does not die at any point in the story...This includes before and after the events of the narrative. [13]
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