Directed by Michelle Latimer
Based on the bestselling book, this urgent feature documentary from celebrated director Michelle Latimer will take viewers on a journey into the mind of one of the world’s foremost Indigenous intellectuals, and one of our greatest storytellers: Thomas King.
Canada Toronto International Film Festival 
USA Sundance Film Festival Canada USA 
ugh there’s a part about the land and the police intervention against those trying to protect it from different movements and I broke down. The government is so dedicated to destroying the Earth they will really stop at nothing.
But also: there is some scenes with seal hunting and harvesting and I already know some white vegans are going to be so outraged.
#TIFF20
Review by Jude Dry
“You have to be careful of the stories you tell, and you have to watch out for the stories you are told,” goes the meditative opening voiceover of “Inconvenient Indian,” an evocative and visually ripe love poem to Canadian Indigenous culture. Our guide is writer and Native rights activist Thomas King, whose 2012 book “The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America” has been given an absorbing screen treatment by Indigenous Canadian filmmaker Michelle Latimer. As King offers: “History is a story we tell about the past,” and Latimer understands filmmaking is a powerful storytelling tool. Unearthing contemporary Indigenous culture with a tender reverence, “Inconvenient Indian” urgently reframes an ugly narrative we’ve been fed for far too long.
A worthwhile companion film to Thomas King’s book, director Michelle Latimer‘a documentary is largely a success.
Via forceful juxtaposition of imagery, often startling, this film often evokes anger along with education. As an Ojibwe I am very thankful it was made, though I do wish it had covered more territory more deeply (it could have been a miniseries or a film double the length).
Compelling, courageous, free of didacticism and often handsomely photographed, Inconvenient Indian is an important film but ultimately less impactful then the book that inspired it.
Streamed as part of the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival.
VIFF 2020: Film #19
An early tracking shot (one that would make Terrence Malick proud) follows an Indigenous man moving carefully through a plain, only to stumble upon the city of Toronto’s unmistakable skyline off in the distance. Or, perhaps, as the movie suggests, Toronto has stumbled onto him. This moment of encounter speaks to the larger narrative of this documentary, which presents an artistic rendering of Canada’s colonial history from the perspective of those colonized. I’d highly recommend that any Canadian, especially the beneficiaries of settler-colonialism, seek it out.
TIFF 2020 Film #9
Reason for pick - Canadian doc about native Canadians
Inconvenient Indian ended up winning the TIFF People's Choice Awards for best Doc, and this makes me happy.
Michelle Latimer, an Algonquin / Métis filmmaker did an incredible job with her first feature bringing native filmmaker and writer Thomas King’s short, I’m Not The Indian You Had In Mind to the screen
An Inconvenient Indian is gentle, rather than being angry and confrontational. He simply points out that Native Canadian / Americans have always been misrepresented by Hollywood and mass media, beginning with the whole Hollywood Cowboys and Indians John Wayne films, and then later by such revered films as Nanook of the North that continued the…
The creation of the "Indian" by white people.
What struck me the most was when they discussed "Nanook of the North". The film-maker asked the Inuit to kill the walrus with a spear, even though they normally used guns. Heaven forbid we show how they really are; gotta show *our* version of them. So sad.
Toronto International Film Festival 2020
I think this is a documentary that all settlers should watch. A poetic look on Indigenous ways of life as they are and how Indigenous people are stereotypically seen but those outside the community.
edit: idk felt the need to come back here and add that the director ended up getting exposed for lying about her background. Wrote everything below without that knowledge
this movie is great, I really liked it for a lot of reasons, but I have a bunch of thoughts right now about how the Canadian government gives very generous grants so that movies like this can get made, yet at the same time is so committed to maintaining its current genocidal system, and how all of that ties in with the arguments Thomas King lays out in his book (+in this film) about First Nations being useful as symbols but “inconvenient” in reality...people being able to tell their own stories is…
TIFF 2020
A sprawling documentary collage of the past, present and future of Native Americans on stolen land, I at once admire Inconvenient Indian for its epic scope and freewheeling attitude, and also find myself frustrated by its fragmented, unfocused form. I can safely say, however, that it is unlike any other documentary I've seen.
I've been meaning to read Thomas King's "The Inconvenient Indian" for years, but as of this moment, I have not. So I'm not sure how this documentary adaptation stacks up to the book. A lot of important ground is covered here, but I think it may be too much ground for one feature-length documentary. It attempts to be an all encompassing macro view of what, in reality, is centuries of historical interactions between many different settler governments and hundreds of different First Nations. No doubt that there are broad themes to these relationships, and THE INCONVENIENT INDIAN has all of those themes pegged. I suppose I just wanted as much depth as breadth here, which might suggest an issue with…
Eighth film of #TIFF20 - review for intoscreens.com
Thomas King sits in the back of a car while making an important observation on how we have to be careful of the stories we tell and those we’ve been told. Once it’s been told, we can never call it back. Throughout the film he tells us the story of the coyote and the ducks, which stands as an allegory for the European settlers taking increasingly more from the Native people of North America. History is not the past, history is the stories we tell about the past, they explain how we we got here.
King narrates Michelle Latimer‘s important documentary ‘Inconvenient Indian‘, examining the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples in North…
Managed to distill some complex issues into key short scenes and allowed me to process and interrogate my reactions to images.
I thought it was at its best when it was personal and specific.
