Slash/Back | |
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Directed by | Nyla Innuksuk |
Screenplay by |
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Produced by |
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Starring | Tasiana Shirley Alexis Vincent-Wolfe Nalajoss Ellsworth Chelsea Prusky |
Cinematography | Guy Godfree |
Edited by | Simone Smith |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | |
Release date |
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Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Slash/Back is a 2022 Canadian Inuit science fiction film directed by Nyla Innuksuk in her feature debut from a screenplay by Innuksuk and Ryan Cavan. It premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest Festival in Texas. [1]
Set in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, a remote community, this story follows four teenage girls. We are introduced to them as they are living a typical boring day. The girls decide to take a boat to the land, where they have always been warned never to go without an adult. Maika decides to bring her dad’s rifle.
On the land, the girls see a strange polar bear. Maika’s little sister shows up and the bear attacks her. The bear is shot and the girls run back to the boat and head home.
Uki goes back to investigate and discovers an alien artifact. She sees the bear and an elk dragging a body to the artifact that begins to drain the blood.
The police officer is later attacked by the polar bear and then finds Uki when he becomes a Skin. The girls escape and hide in a shipping container. Uki, Maika, and Jesse decide to find the two Skins and take them out after being unable to get ahold of their parents who are at a Social Dance.
After surviving the attack by the cop Skin, the girls decide Uki is to be bait to attack the fisherman Skin. Thomassie arrives with his Honda four wheeler and the girls use this to their advantage. When the fisherman Skin arrives, Thomassie captures the Skin and drives off but the Skin is able to get free. It chases Uki and attacks her, managing to attach and suck blood out of her.
Maika and Jesse follow the Skin’s blood trail and see it has gone to Maika’s house. The girls go inside where the Skin attacks Maika’s father. Maika gets knocked out and flashes back to when her dad taught her about hunting. She awakens and helps set her father free while slicing the throat of the Skin with a blade. A sharp light beam emits from the alien artifact and shoots into the sky. The Skin dries out and seems to die.
The girls see the light and a space craft flies out of it. The girls celebrate their victory.
A month later, things returned to normal except news reporters descending on the community. When asked, Maika says she’s a hunter. Uki talked to the reporters and the movie ends.
The concept for Slash/Back was first presented at the 2018 Frontières Co-Pro Market in Montréal, followed by the 2019 Frontières Finance and Packaging Forum in Helsinki and then the Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival, after which point Sierra/Affinity boarded the project as an international distributor. [2]
Principal photography took place on location on Baffin Island in summer 2019. It became the first production to film in the Inuit hamlet of Pangnirtung. [3] The area was already experiencing a housing shortage so production flew in fifty beds and set up accommodation for the crews in two local schools. Acting workshops were setup to find local girls to star in the film. [3]
A first look still was revealed in March 2021. [4]
Slash/Back premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest Festival in Texas. [1] In Canada, it was the opening night film at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival. [5]
On October 21, 2022, it was released in selected theatres and to video on demand service Vudu. [6] [7]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 92% approval rating, based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's consensus reads, "An impressive feature debut for director/co-writer Nyla Innuksuk, Slash/Back puts a refreshing spin on the standard alien invasion thriller." [8] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 out of 100, based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [9]
Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail wrote that "the moments between can be rough, the result of a script whose last two acts can't reach the heights of its enticing conceit, a choppy sense of pacing that speeds up when it should slow down and vice versa, an amateur cast whose rawness is at odds with the story that they are enlisted with telling, and a no-frills visual-effects budget that robs the film of its central creature-feature thrills. There is, though, so much promise in every chilly inch of Innuksuk's vision, starting with her film’s firm sense of place – the director grew up in Nunavut, dreaming of darkness even when sunlight was 24/7 – and extending to how the director continues horror’s long tradition of sneaking in heavy themes that audiences might otherwise not so readily shoulder." [10]
The film was shortlisted for the Directors Guild of Canada's 2022 Jean-Marc Vallée DGC Discovery Award. [11]
Baffin Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada, the second largest island in the Americas, and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is 507,451 km2 (195,928 sq mi) with a population density of 0.03/km2; the population was 13,039 according to the 2021 Canadian census; and it is located at 68°N70°W. It also contains the city of Iqaluit, which is the capital of Nunavut.
Pangnirtung is an Inuit hamlet, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, located on Baffin Island. The community is located about 45 km (28 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, and about 2,700 km (1,700 mi) from the North Pole. Pangnirtung is situated on a coastal plain at the coast of Pangnirtung Fjord, a fjord which eventually merges with Cumberland Sound. As of January 2022, the mayor is Lynn Mike.
Tanya Tagaq, also credited as Tagaq, is a Canadian Inuk throat singer, songwriter, novelist, actor, and visual artist from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq), Nunavut, Canada, on the south coast of Victoria Island.
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a 2001 Canadian epic film directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and produced by his company Isuma Igloolik Productions. It was the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language.
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Simeonie Keenainak is an Inuit accordionist and retired RCMP officer from Pangnirtung, Nunavut, Canada. He is also a photographer, teacher and hunter. He has performed at the Pangnirtung Music Festival and was featured in regional and national media for his musicianship and cultural community efforts.
Nunavut is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, which provided this territory to the Inuit for independent government. The boundaries had been drawn in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's political map in half a century since the province of Newfoundland was admitted in 1949.
Historically Inuit cuisine, which is taken here to include Greenlandic cuisine, Yup'ik cuisine and Aleut cuisine, consisted of a diet of animal source foods that were fished, hunted, and gathered locally.
The Girl in the Photographs is a 2015 American horror thriller film written and directed by Nick Simon and executive produced by Wes Craven. The film stars Kal Penn, Claudia Lee, Kenny Wormald, Miranda Rae Mayo, Luke Baines, Christy Carlson Romano, Katharine Isabelle, and Mitch Pileggi. Filming began in April 2015 in Victoria, British Columbia. It was an official selection at Toronto International Film Festival 2015 in the Midnight Madness category. The film was released on April 1, 2016, in a limited release and through video on demand, by Vertical Entertainment. The Girl in the Photographs is the last film Wes Craven produced before his death on August 30, 2015.
Alethea Arnaquq-Baril is an Inuk filmmaker, known for her work on Inuit life and culture. She is the owner of Unikkaat Studios, a production company in Iqaluit, which produces Inuktitut films. She was awarded the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, in 2017 in recognition of her work as an activist and filmmaker. She currently works part-time at the Qanak Collective, a social project which supports Inuit empowerment initiatives.
Lucy Tulugarjuk is an Inuit actress, throat singer, and director. She is executive director for the Nunavut Independent Television Network.
Nyla Innuksuk is a Canadian film director, writer, and producer, and virtual reality content creator. She is the CEO of Mixtape VR.
Freaky is a 2020 American comedy slasher film directed by Christopher Landon, from a screenplay by Michael Kennedy and Landon, and starring Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor, and Alan Ruck. A twist on Freaky Friday, the film centers on a teenage girl who unintentionally switches bodies with a middle-aged male serial killer. Jason Blum serves as a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner.
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Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of Inuit clothing extends far back into prehistory, with significant evidence to indicate that its basic structure has changed little since. The clothing systems of all Arctic peoples are similar, and evidence in the form of tools and carved figurines indicates that these systems may have originated in Siberia as early as 22,000 BCE, and in northern Canada and Greenland as early as 2500 BCE. Pieces of garments found at archaeological sites, dated to approximately 1000 to 1600 CE, are very similar to garments from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, which confirms consistency in the construction of Inuit clothing over centuries.
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