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Arctic Indigenous Filmmakers on Climate Change: First-Hand Perspectives · Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast

• 0:00
  NADIA: Welcome to Industry Insights, the EFM podcast presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. My name is Nadia Denton. I'm a curator and social impact producer based in London. This season of Industry Insights, the EFM podcast puts trendsetting industry issues in focus, creating a compass for the forthcoming film season. The year-round podcast is produced in cooperation with Goethe Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. Today, I will be joined by a number of guests with which I will explore the Arctic Indigenous Witness Program. The scheme, which aims to raise the voices of indigenous Arctic filmmakers, invited a group of creatives to make short documentary films, looking at how climate change is affecting their traditional communities and livelihoods in the Arctic North. I'm delighted to introduce our speakers for today's podcast. Liisa Holmberg is the CEO of the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund. She is a Sami filmmaker who comes from the Finnish side of Sami land. Since 1994, she has worked in the film industry and supports Sami and other indigenous filmmakers. Lana Romanova also joins us. She's an artist and filmmaker born in the Sakha Republic, Russia, located south of the Arctic Circle. Her practice centers on the importance of indigenous visual language. Our second filmmaker is Sadetło Scott. She hails from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Her work is concerned with language revitalization. We also have one of the mentors from the Arctic Indigenous Witness Program, Danis Goulet. Danis recently directed the acclaimed FX series, "Reservation Dogs." She is Cree Metti, originally from the Northern Saskatchewan. So welcome.
• 1:50
  NADIA: Lisa, you started the Indigenous Film Fund and the training scheme that the filmmakers participated on. Can you tell us more about the Witness Program and who it has supported?
• 1:59
  LIISA: Yes, thank you. The Witness Program is a training program for Arctic Indigenous filmmakers who are all over the Arctic, from Alaska, from Canada North, from Greenland, from Samiland, and also from Russia. And the idea was that we need to have our own view, our own stories about the Arctic and what is happening right now in our home communities. And so, Telefilm Canada was very interested to support this training program. So we gathered six filmmakers all around Arctic and then we have three mentors. And then we had the workshops, online workshops on site or face-to-face workshops also. And we managed to make five short films which have been already premiered in Toronto, Imaginative Film Festival, and here in Europe, in Skammakova Film Festival in Finland.
• 3:14
  NADIA: Wonderful, thank you. And when we were talking in preparation for the podcast, you said something to me which really stuck, which was that it was a dream to get the world view of Arctic communities as relates to climate change reflected in these films. And also you mentioned the fact that your community as well as some of the others tend to have a lot of researchers coming and asking questions about the Indigenous sort of experience and view of climate change. And that they do their research, they take it away, and they come up with their own sort of analysis, but that's their analysis and it's not always exactly reflecting what the community thinks. So I wanted to just get your opinions on that point and particularly why you feel that these opinions and voices are so urgent at this time.
• 4:04
  LIISA: Yeah, because Arctic is in the focus now because of the climate change in the whole world and what is happening in the Arctic, it's going to happen later in the whole world. And I'm coming in the very, very remote village in the North Finland and when I was a child, every summer there came some sort of anthropologist or whatever researchers and they had their own questions, which we didn't understand really, but we were answering anyway. And then they took our answers, went to somewhere in London or Helsinki or wherever in the world, and they were interpreting our answers in their own way. And then they were making those books and reports. And they were not accurate at all. When I grew up and I found those reports and I could understand English, I was so very sort of surprised how they were describing our lives. And so that's why it's very important that our own worldview, our own questions and answers are coming out how we are thinking. And I think our worldview and how we are coping with this climate change, it will help the decision makers in the world.
• 5:41
  NADIA: And it really touched me that what you were saying about the research they did during your childhood and then as an adult, being able to find some of that and seeing the inaccuracies, what were some of the inaccurate things that they were saying?
• 5:51
  LIISA: They were gossiping.
• 5:54
  NADIA: Oh really?
• 5:55
  LIISA: They were really gossiping, because they couldn't understand our family system and how important the family is and the extended family. So they were gossiping and making their own interpreting how the people are. Are they angry to each other? Are they in love? Are they, I don't know what. And that was so unfair. And also, how we are using our fishing waters or how we are using our berry picking areas. They were thinking that we are just fighting each other instead of the unwritten law where we should go, which family is fishing where and picking the berries or hunting. Because that kind of information is not written. We know.
• 6:58
  NADIA: Now it's really interesting to hear how that probably would have been taken so personally when you read it. And basically the judgments that outsiders would have made about you and your family and community and how that has been documented. And people will be looking at that and taking it as factual. When like you said, it was gossip.
• 7:16
  LIISA: Yeah, and when it's academic paper, then it's fact. But when we are saying, then it's not so much fact. But it's opposite, yeah.
• 7:30
  NADIA: Yeah, which takes us back full circle in terms of the point about the importance of indigenous voices in their own films. So Lana, you completed a short film as part of the scheme which is called "Hinkelten." And the central theme is love in a sort of romantic, platonic, intimate and maternal context. Can you tell us a bit more about how you created the film? I mean, I think one of the things that I observed with you in the film when I watched it was just your unspoken connections with the individuals in it. Even though obviously there were parts where it wasn't translated and I didn't understand the language. It was just this sense of those communal bonds that you had. So please tell us more about how you made the film.
• 8:10
  SVETLANA: Hey, thank you for having me at the podcast. I think, well, the way it works, I guess I thought in vignettes in some sense. And the visual aspect of the film follows also the poetics, the poems. In a way it was just sort of compilation of a lot of personal footage and from the previous films that I've made. So it's like a collage in a way, like a memory. But also in a way it's like a goodbye to something that is probably not gonna look the same.
• 8:42
  NADIA: And the poems, did you write them yourself or did you research those poems?
• 8:47
  SVETLANA: Those are my personal notes. And the reason I decided to talk sort of in that form of a language, it's also because of the censorship. I'm trying to be safe in regards to the subjects that I'm also talking about and myself and my family because as you know, the current political situation in Russia, like you're not allowed to speak upfront about specific things and climate change being one of them. So this was in a way me trying to think, how could I convey this feeling, this experience and make the experience of watching this film sort of like, I wanted to have an audience to have sort of like a bodily resonance to the feelings that I'm trying to describe here.
• 9:29
  NADIA: Thank you. So we're actually gonna listen to a short clip from the film which you're gonna talk to us about.
• 9:34
  QUOTE: “We give up routine in increments. One day you forget to brush your teeth and it bleeds into a week. You know when it decays present, we are loveless. Does this remind you of that time when our nights evaporated, dried out by the memories of our grandmother, of the theft itself? At the zing, where renderings of those are endless, how do you depict love?”
• 10:32
  NADIA: So Lana, can you tell us about what we heard, if you could explain it and tell us about the significance in the film and why you decided to pull it together as you did?
• 10:42
  SVETLANA: In a way, I kind of feel like it's, well the part with the teeth brushing and stuff, I guess it comes from a personal experience or dealing with a depression, but I feel like we are the mirrors of the state that we are living in, in some sense. And in total, I think it's just like a comment on ongoing colonization and sort of the conditioning that Arctic dwellers are facing. And yeah, I guess it's a response to that. And in the ways how to think about love when every forms of love that we have experienced or have been taught to sort of like perform are within Western canons. And within that is also the conditioning. It's like, how can we express love and see ourselves as worthy when the state keeps oppressing us and at the end of the day, we end up feeling very depressed.
• 11:33
  NADIA: Yeah, and I definitely got the sense of the heaviness in terms of you mentioning that feeling of depression. So in terms of the actual voice, is that your voice? How did you determine how you were going to do the voiceover and the sort of turning of it? Because it does, in terms of just hearing that sound, it does leave quite an impact even in parts where it might not be exactly entirely clear what the character is expressing.
• 11:59
  SVETLANA: It's just my voice. It has like a little bit of a reverb and like it slowed down a little bit. I wanted to sort of have this effect of haunting in a sense like haunting is a dream, haunting is a presence of this ruins that we're living in. So I wanted it to be gooey in that sense. That's the, I guess, formula I was going off of. But in terms of the poetry and writing, the way I tend to work, I guess a lot comes together in the editing for me. I don't necessarily go out with a plan of having like a structured film or like have a script. I usually film, I compile footage, I have like a general idea of what I wanna convey. And then afterwards the cooking happens in the editing.
• 12:41
  NADIA: I like that, some good cooking. In addition to film, you work across other mediums and just curious to find out how you have worked this effectively in terms of conveying cultural messages that or even language or words that you feel otherwise would be lost in translation. 'Cause certainly the sense I had when I spoke to you in preparation for this podcast is just the challenges at times of interpreting a certain worldview in obviously a Western frame.
• 13:15
  SVETLANA: I try to be cautious about it a lot, especially within the art settings because art and film are completely different worlds, but they're similar in the sense that there is obviously an institutionalized racism and there are obviously outcomes that certain institution expects you to show or like talk in a specific way or like present the subject in more sort of like sensationalized ways, right? So I'm trying to be very careful about that and very thoughtful, but it's like a constant sort of work because the times change, political context change and I guess it's not an easy road that I have chosen for myself, but yeah, I guess I'm trying, but so far I feel like I've been failing for the past 20 years in conveying any form of a message because I don't know, it's just difficult to explain even sort of where I come from or that we exist. It's a constant battle of sort of like historicizing yourself, right? So this is what I'm doing in my work a lot. I'm trying to like create new radical forms of self-historization to go against the grain of like how the Russian empire has been historicizing us and presenting us in a way. And yeah, I guess that's just the process, yeah.
• 14:25
  NADIA: Liisa was shaking her head, Liisa.
• 14:28
  LIISA: Yeah, you are making very good films, Lana. You are doing those films so that you go deep inside and then you leave lots of space for us as the viewers to understand or not understand, but like to me, “Hinkleten” is very much like you are homesick, you want to go back to see your reindeer, your river, your snow and tundra and all that. And it's really touching film.
• 15:07
  SVETLANA: Thank you. I think the other thing I'm also always striving in the forms of sort of expressing myself is that I'm always concerned about sort of not showing our problems so didactically because I kind of feel like if I'm making movies for my own community, it's not very interesting to sort of see or witness something that you already know. So it would be more interesting to sort of make films that make you think about not very obvious things and mental health obviously included there too because there is no conversation around mental health whatsoever in Russia. It's like a taboo or forbidden thing, yeah.
• 15:42
  NADIA: Yeah, and I wanted to reiterate the comments that Liisa made. I feel that Lana, in terms of your offering, it will outlive you. And I know it's probably quite difficult when as an artist, you're having to go through the difficulty, the discrimination, the restriction, but I suppose this is the beauty of our form in film in that there will be young people and even elderly people and whatnot, who will discover your interpretations and find something in it that really resonates with them I think across backgrounds and that's the beauty of the medium. So I hope that despite the challenges, you will still continue, because 20 years is like a long time to have had a film footprint and it shows that obviously you've been able to endure. So I really want you to feel encouraged that the work that you're making is even in its small way having some impact and there are people who are gonna see this work and discover your communities and their plight and their worldview who would have never known and that's definitely very enriching.
• 16:43
  SVETLANA: Thank you.
• 16:45
  NADIA: So one of the things that I think is important and I suppose we've kind of been alluding to is the sense of hope and the sense of what future prospects could be and whether it's to do with specific communities or in climate. So Lana, what messages of hope would you really want audiences to take away from engaging with your work?
• 17:08
  SVETLANA: Oh, in that sense, I'm pretty pessimistic. I'm honestly had lost any form of hope of anything with an ongoing events, especially in Palestine right now. I just like, I don't see hope.
• 17:21
  NADIA: And I think that's fair enough. I suppose it's, and I think we're gonna come onto this because one of the things I want us to talk about, and I know some of the others on the podcast have opinions about the indigenous worldview, in terms of dealing with some of these situations that we're in. So definitely a question that we're gonna come back to. So, Danis, you participated as a mentor on the scheme and I'm keen to hear about your own experiences as an indigenous filmmaker navigating her way through the North American film industry.
• 17:52
  DANIS: Yeah, thank you. I first started making short films, I guess, around the early to mid 2000s. And back in those days, the landscape was really different and actually we were finding that indigenous filmmakers were getting a lot of support making short films through the arts councils here in Canada, but we weren't really seeing that translate into feature length films. And also our community was small and we all knew each other and we would all meet up at different indigenous film festivals all around the world. And so we were connected as this global community and that was really exciting because we needed each other. You know, when we faced our own countries and what we were up against, there were all kinds of barriers. And when I hear Lana talking about what she's up against in Russia, it just is heart-wrenching to hear about it because the different systems of oppression, they work in similar ways, but I think the invisibility of indigenous people within the state of Russia is very extreme and in Canada, it's a very different political context. And that said, you know, we dealt with all kinds of barriers, structural racism, a belief that our stories had no value and certainly didn't have any market value. When I made a short film where it had a monster in it and the monster spoke in Cree, I was told that they didn't wanna make it in the Cree language, which is my language. And I had to refuse to go forward with the project to do it in any other way. And so we have to fight battles the whole way through. And the battles are not the regular sort of creative tensions that you might have to fight as a director or a writer on any other projects. They are battles that have to do with defending our own humanity, defending our own right to tell our stories our way. I also had another experience where I was trying to get my feature film "Night Raiders" funded and the broadcaster turned us down and sent us the notes of the reader and the story was sort of like this allegory for the residential school system in Canada, which was a system of taking indigenous children away from their families and taken to boarding schools where they were abused in horrible ways. And this was a system in Canada that was in place for seven generations of indigenous families. And the notes that I got back on the script were great. It's propulsive, good story, good character, you know, like all the creative check boxes. And then the reader said, "But I don't know how this is relevant, because priests are no longer abusing indigenous children. We as a country have moved on from this." So it was a political take, actually, on my story and that was the grounds, like the negative feedback about the story and the feedback came in the very month that Canada as a nation was releasing the findings of a five-year process called the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” that found that children going into a residential school had a greater chance of dying than a Canadian soldier did going into World War II. So these were atrocities actually, and our country hadn't even begun to deal with it. And so we as filmmakers, you know, end up defending our projects on these kinds of grounds, which you can imagine are incredibly emotional and thinking about what Lana is saying about mental health. It's like how do you maintain fortitude when you're trying to just do all the regular things that are challenging for filmmakers: getting your projects funded, finding partners, all the things that we all know are hard already, but then you come up against these kinds of barriers and this is why we need each other and we need to stick together.
• 22:25
  NADIA: Definitely, and I mean, what's apparent, you know, from your comments and even those made by Lana, is just this real sense of trauma, which I suppose we've got it on an environmental ecological level, obviously, that Mother Earth is experiencing. And then we as individuals, you know, in terms of our mental health. But in all that you've said and, you know, looking at your trajectory, Danis, and even your brilliant series, "Reservation Dogs," which I did watch and which I was particularly touched by in terms of a lot of the folklore, I wondered if you could share with us how you have remained resilient and what things that you have drawn on as strength to push through and to continue to tell these stories when you are getting, as you said, this level of pushback that is so intense and personal and so damaging on many levels.
• 23:16
  DANIS: Yeah, I think the strength comes from community and that comes from when we gather as filmmakers, as artists in that indigenous artistic and film community. And it also, of course, comes from our connections back home to our own communities. I started to really think about the fact that the fight always takes away, it never gives back. And because we're forced to be in fighting mode so much of the time, as I've kind of grown up as a part of this community, I've really started to think about spaces that are restorative and give us that sense of, not just fortitude, but a kind of freedom, you know, a kind of hopeful spaces. And for me, that is returning to home, it's returning to the land, it's going to a Cree language camp that I go to every summer that feels like such an important touchstone for me to go home and to be in the language. And when we gather together and I see what other filmmakers are doing, it's so inspiring. And when I see the next generation coming up and there's so many more of these brilliant, brilliant artists bringing so many stories, and I see what they're up against and they're doing it in spite of all of that, it just propels me to keep going. And also, at the heart of a show like "Reservation Dogs" is, you know, we don't want to be defined by trauma. And I think what you see in Lana's work is just so much richness and texture and connection, but at the heart of it is love. And it's in all of the works that were in this witness program, that's at the core and "Reservation Dogs," another amazing example, is that the love is the glue. And as long as we stay in that place, that's where we will be renewed.
• 25:30
  NADIA: That's really inspiring and motivational. Thank you so much, Danis. So on that point of language, Sadetło, you grew up not speaking your indigenous language, but learned it as an adult. Can you tell us about how learning your indigenous language has impacted your creative filmmaking practice?
• 25:30
  SADETLO: Yeah, first off, I would say that I'm still learning. I'm always in a learning process. I think I'll be a lifelong learner, but it definitely has impacted my creative process in that a lot of what I've been trying to do is either explain the grief that comes with having not learned my language as a child, or in the reverse, to think about how I might be able to contribute to my language by creating language resources, because in my particular language of Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì, the number of resources we have for new learners is very, very low. So it's a mix of how do I explain to somebody who hasn’t experienced language loss about what that feels like, but also how do I uplift our language by helping create something to contribute to it.
• 26:48
  NADIA: And you link language revitalization and climate change. Can you tell us what language revitalization means and how you draw that connection?
• 26:58
  SADETLO: Yeah, to me, language revitalization is the act of breathing new life into a language. We think of it as languages that sometimes are sleeping. They're never gone, they're never lost. They're just taking, you know, their much needed break. So it's the act of breathing new life into it and ensuring that it comes back that much more powerful.
• 27:22
  NADIA: Thank you. And this is a good moment probably to segue into a clip from your short film, "We Save Ourselves."
• 27:30
  QUOTE: “If we are going to take leadership in the Dene way, then we need to strengthen who we are as Dene people. And we start by strengthening our language because the language holds the key to that relationship and to that worldview that cannot be translated. And the language comes from the land. And if we're going to take care of the land and our relationship to that land, then we need to take care of who we are as people. Indigenous people have always lived sustainably with the land, with the seasons. But the other thing is too that we've always been, like our ancestors have been adaptable. They've adapted to change, continuing to live the way of life out on the land.”
• 28:18
  NADIA: So Sadetło, tell us about how that clip relates to the rest of the film.
• 28:23
  SADETLO: So the two people in the film, Dati Tetzow and Rina Mandvil. They are speaking about the importance of language and explaining our worldview. Liisa, Danis, Lana, they've all kind of spoken a bit about how our relationship to land is really important as Indigenous people. And through the language, we're able to kind of explain how that relationship works, how we interact with the land, how we know and hold information and knowledge about the land and history in the land. And I think when we speak about climate change and how drastically we're seeing a difference, language really is an important part of how we can show difference in what we're experiencing to explain historically what we saw versus what we're now seeing. But also, as our earth is showing us that it's being drastically impacted, it's trying to tell us something and we need to listen to it. Our languages can help portray that. It can help send those messages. So I think language is such a key component to climate action. And the two very incredible ladies who were in my film speak to that.
• 29:50
  NADIA: And I'm aware from what you had told me in preparation for this podcast that your community experienced wildfires in recent months. And in fact, while you were making the film, that's part of this mentoring scheme.
• 30:05
  SADETLO: Yes, it was one of the craziest experiences I've ever had in my life. I was actually in Norway to meet with the other indigenous, Arctic indigenous witness program participants and mentors. And while I was there four days into my trip, I learned that my entire family was being evacuated from our community as was our entire community of 19 to 20,000 people. So it was an insane experience, one that I could never have predicted, but I'm so grateful for the amount of support that came from everybody.
• 30:47
  NADIA: And how are things with the community now?
• 30:50
  SADETLO: So our particular community was very fortunate in that our actual city was safe. Our surrounding lands were burned, to give context. My Clichos family's traditional hunting lands were quite significantly burnt, but we did have other communities within our territory, the Northwest territories in Northern Canada that had significant home loss, lots of impacted families. So I would say our particular community was safe, but we still need a lot of support for other communities.
• 31:26
  NADIA: Thank you for sharing that. I know it was obviously very troubling at the time and probably still is in many respects in terms of being able to rehabilitate and to get that connection back in terms of the way that the community engages with the land. So clearly in all that has been said as pertains to climate, we're facing apocalyptic times in terms of earth destruction. What is your hope in terms of the overall impact that the short films could make in terms of changing people's minds about how they interact with the earth? Because I feel as if due to the fact that these climate conversations have been going on in recent years, there is a certain amount of public fatigue in people maybe feeling that they're small and they're powerless and how can they really make a change. And obviously we're getting conflicting messages at times from our governments and even just ways in which we should be trying to be more environmentally conscious or ways that we should be trying to make positive changes to climate. So Liisa, as the founder of the scheme, what would you hope could result in terms of people seeing the short films and taking action?
• 32:36
  LIISA: First of all, that they will listen to us. The most important message is that we are still here and we are living in this Arctic area. We are living with very near the nature and the water and the air. So that there is hope and there are lots of things you can learn from us if you are just listening. Because I know the academic and those researchers, they are doing also very good work but they are not listening even them. I don't know who they are listening, the money maybe. Like Lana's film, about those beautiful people and the nature and the reindeer and the water and how you are living there and the sense of humor. And sort of like people with dignity and pride. And Sadetło’s film about the language. When your forests were burning last August, I was crying, you were crying two weeks, but I was crying because I was thinking if my forest, I'm very much forest people. So if they are burning away and then I can't see them in, well, it takes 120 years to grow back. So it's awful. It's, they are worth more something else than money and that's our message. And also our message is hope, even Lana's film has hope. But Danis has a better explanation. Come on.
• 34:32
  DANIS: Yeah, I feel as though our stories, indigenous stories, indigenous languages, are the original languages of this land. And that's what I love about Sadetło’s connection. When I first heard about her film, I was so excited that she was making this connection between indigenous languages and our relationship to climate change because these languages, we are told in our cultures, they come from the land and they come from the people who have been in relationship with this land for thousands of years. So when you think about the context of how deep that knowledge runs and the value of it and the worldviews that are contained in it, it's hard to even explain how rich and beautiful and poetic it is. When my language teacher always says the language misses us and when we return to it, there's something that happens. And I remember last summer when I was at Cree Camp and we were saying goodbye in our sharing circle for the final one, I was in tears and I was telling my other language learning community members that what I was starting, beginning to realize is that the language teaches us how to live. And this is why it's important to listen to the people who have been in relationship with this land for thousands of years, because the dominant cultures that have come in and colonized these countries all over the world have imposed a value system that is destroying our planet. And we are seeing human destruction, animal destruction, land destruction on a scale that we have never seen before, these values of capitalism and money over and above life. It's actually, when you think about it, it makes no sense. It's just a path of destruction. And so when we think about ways forward, it is about going to that place of values of what do we need to be asking ourselves about how to live on this land. And I find that those answers come from my culture and my language and my people who have been on this land and understand what it is to have relationships of reciprocity, not of taking and exploitation.
• 37:19
  NADIA: Thank you, Danis. You spoke that so vehemently and so well, and I'm definitely gonna take your quote that the language misses us. That's something that I've made a note of. But reflecting on this point and notion about language coming from the land and language teaching us how to live, I'm curious if any of you can share maybe a quote or a saying from your community or your indigenous folklore that can maybe offer some kind of insight or response in terms of how we should be interacting with the land.
• 37:51
  LIISA: In Sami, we are nomads and we are following our reindeer. The Lannajo people also. And all over the world, we are living with our animals. And in Sami, we are saying that the home is in our heart. So home is all the time with us when we are moving with the reindeer. So where the heart is, there is the home.
• 38:28
  NADIA: That's lovely. Thank you so much.
• 38:31
  DANIS: There's so many concepts that offer so much. In our community, we hear a lot about the Cree word " wâhkôhtowin", which means kinship. And it is talked about widely in the community. And the kinship is expansive. It doesn't just mean your family. It means relationships across with animals and with the land. And there's always a question of what is the nature of that relationship. And then I also love the word for “filmmaker”, which my dad has told has a root word in the word that is “light”. So, the translation of the word would mean “one who shines a light on something”. And so, it's like that is what we're doing as storytellers from a Cree perspective.
• 39:28
  NADIA: Appreciate you sharing that with us.
• 39:31
  SADETLO: I think for me, there are two particular words that come to mind. The first being actually the title of my film, which is "Edah Datsite", which means “We Save Ourselves”, because I really believe very passionately that we have the power to really uplift our own communities to restore them and our land. So, "Edah Datsite" means a lot to me. And the second phrase that I think means a lot as well is "Ellhe Eik Alatsida", which means working together, because those two combined, it really does mean we have to work together as people to see positive change. So, those are my two phrases.
• 40:21
  NADIA: Thank you, Sadetło.
• 40:24
  SVETLANA: I wish I could share something in Evin, but unfortunately our family lost the language, but we still speak Sakha, which is the second indigenous language, which has also sort of become the new national language of the Republic. But I would like to share this quote, I guess, that entails a certain sentiment that was very big in my dad's youth, I guess it's from a pop song. It says, "Engul biya kundu", meaning “freedom is something that is very cherished for us”. And it's interesting because that sentiment sort of traveled from their time to ours. And we still haven't seen "Kungul Sir", meaning “free land”.
• 41:08
  NADIA: Thank you so much, Lana. So, this brings us to the end of our conversation. It was wonderful to be in communion with all of you and may the ancient wisdom of the indigenous communities be with us all, even audiences listening to this podcast. Liisa, you have spoken, or indeed all of the guests have spoken so wonderfully about the various films. Is there any possibility that they'll be available online in the coming months?
• 41:37
  LIISA: Yeah, they are going to be in our own Netflix, sapmifilm.com. And it is open in Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greenland, Germany and Canada. And we are trying to open it to whole world, but definitely they will be there.
• 42:03
  NADIA: That's great. So, hopefully we can put all of that information in the show notes so that audience members can follow up and have the opportunity to watch the films. But very grateful for all that's been shared in this space. And very much looking forward to some of the new initiatives and projects that are gonna emerge from all that's been discussed.
• 42:24
  SVETLANA: Thanks very much everybody. Nice to see you all.
• 42:31
  NADIA: Today our guests have helped us to understand the climate related impact that indigenous filmmakers can make through sharing their perspectives of their communities, in this case, the Arctic North. In the face of unprecedented earth destruction, it could be that the solutions we seek may come from unexpected sources. This season of industry insights has been produced in cooperation with the Goethe Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. This particular episode has been developed in partnership with Téléfilm Canada. Please do tune in to future episodes of industry insights. Find us where you get your podcasts or on the website of the European Film Market, www.efm-berlinale.de. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.