The Grizzlies
The film tells the origin story of a high school lacrosse team in Kugluktuk, the most-western community of the Nunavut territory in the arctic region of Northern Canada. Next to hockey, lacrosse is the national sport in Canada. But this is not a film about sports. It starts with the arrival of the white teacher Russ Sheppard who doesn’t know a thing about the town or Inuit culture he was sent to. Russ is accordingly shocked about the conditions he encounters here. Food is exorbitantly expensive. The teenagers he is supposed to teach rarely come to class, never turn in their home assignments when due and spend most of their time apparently smoking pot or consuming huge amounts of alcohol. But what is even worse: a rampant suicide epidemic raging among teenagers. Small wonder one is inclined to think when considering this rough and god-forsaken place. After Russ becomes aware of the suicide wave, he decides to start a lacrosse team to help the Inuit teenagers to escape this miserable trap of alcohol, drugs and domestic violence. (Festival information, IFF Mannheim-Heidelberg 2019)
The film takes place amongst the Inuit, who across generations are still traumatized by the forced assimilations of the past. This is a story based on actual events, of a non-Inuit, a white teacher who is full of illusions, and whose theoretical teaching ethos is confronted with the unusually high number of suicides amongst young Inuits in particular. Everything in his classroom changes as he introduces Lacrosse as part of the curriculum, a sport that historically helped settle differences between Native American tribes. With this change and through the values of the sport, pupils are able to find a way out for themselves, towards respect for the essentials in their traditional values of family and community.