We are so damn privileged when First Nations storytellers opt to share their stories outside of their communities. These are the stories we tried to kill, to silence. But they are as resilient as their tellers. In the intro to the film, directors Edenshaw and Haig-Brown explained that the wildman story was often told at the beginning of a potlatch. Someone transgresses, doesn’t follow protocol. A traumatic event ensues and the man literally goes wild with guilt and grief. His friends need to confront what he did, come to terms with it and find forgiveness before his community finds him, heals him and welcomes him back. What more perfect way to open a community event than by reminding those present…

A folk horror tale based on the idea of the Gaagiixiid, or Haida Wildman. The film is entitely unique for being the only feature filmed in the native Haida language. The 19th century setting and cast, which features some of the few remaining speakers of the language lend Edge of the Knife a real sense of authenticity. The film begins by introducing us to the central characters and their way of life, before the story develops with the death of a young boy which subsequently sends his uncle spiralling into madness. It's slow moving but this deliberate pace really allows the film to explore the central themes of grief, loss and forgiveness while presenting the detail in a stark and…

Edge of the Knife was the result of an intensely collaborative creation process, from the choice of a story through the entirety of production. Guided by a collective, majority Inuit-owned production company, the film was shot in Haida Gwaii (FKA the Queen Charlotte Islands), the home of the Haida people, and made in the Haida language, one fluently spoken by fewer than thirty people. With an almost entirely first nations cast and production team, and nearly half of the world's fluent speakers involved in its making, Edge of the Knife is a labor of love, an act of resistance, and a horror movie, all rolled into one.

Based on a Haida fable about the Gaagiixiid, or wild man, the film…

Set in the 19th century, shot entirely in 2 Haida dialects, this film works metaphorically on a number of levels. During the Q & A with the filmmakers in front of a predominantly Indigenous audience, an audience member asked about the sacred ceremonies in the film....asking whether or not it was okay to allow these ceremonies to be shot on film and once shot on film, there's no control over who sees them. As we know settlers & colonizers are notorious for placing sacred cultural objects of living cultures on crass display, the question was implying that this might be seen as no different. Co-director Gwaii Edenshaw answered it beautifully: the entire film is in and of itself a ceremony, with language…

Edge of the Knife is an indigenous horror story told entirely in the endangered native language of the Haida tribe and examines the emotional mechanics of the grief and shame following an unforgivable error. It’s heavy but not brow-beating, edging into body horror and is thoroughly Folk Horror. 

Sometimes patterns emerge in my watching and I’ve been running into masks lately. Movie Melt just covered Death Mask and I also watched The Twilight Zone episode The Masks, where a greedy family is forced to wear grotesque portrayals of their inner ugliness. In Wyrd War’s opening lecture to this film, they spoke of the meaning of masks to the Haida. When the mask is worn, you take on the traits of the creature…

82

Preservation of culture is one of the most important and noble causes one could undertake. There are probably countless languages that have been lost through time and obscurity, and yet a concentrated effort has been raised to revive the near-dead language of the indigenous people of Haida Gwaii, a small archipelago off the western coast of Canada. One such effort includes Edge of the Knife, a fascinating local folk tale performed entirely in the Haida language and featuring exquisite cinematography showcasing the beautiful archipelago's lush landscape.

I would draw comparisons to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, another local indigenous-focused film- but the Mayan language is at least thriving in its own community. Fewer than 30 people still speak the Haida language,…

The filmed version of a Haida story, the end result of working on a film with the goal of promoting the Haida language among the people of Haida Gwaii, it's remarkable to be able to sit down and watch this --set in the 19th century, it's a completely immersive story of the Haida, speaking their own language and dealing with a primal tragedy--two groups of an extended family getting together late in the fishing season -one man accidentally causing the death of his best friend (cousin?'s) son when he takes him out in the boat under ominous clouds to fish for black cod, and then flees into the forest, where racked by guilt, he becomes a gaagiixiid, a sort of…

Tiff 18 #2
A hugely important movie in Canada. And like Canadian film tradition, it is doomed to go unseen by most Canadians. This is a mistake. I knew nothing of Haida Gwaii before seeing it and it is the perfect introduction to the Haida people and their language, which the film is the first ever to be produced completely in, and is at risk of extinction with something like 30 speakers left in the world.

The story is a simple Haida myth about a man, distraught by physical trauma, becoming the "Gaagiixiid", or "Wildman". It's simple enough, which is a bit of a disappointment since I felt there may have been an opportunity to work on some thematic levels…