by Charles Kirkland Jr.
A visual art documentary that captures the seasonal changes in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (formerly Whitefish Lake) is called Aki.
Aki is a meditative and visually immersive documentary that invites viewers into the heart of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, a First Nation community nestled in Northern Ontario, Canada. Filmed across multiple seasons and entirely without narration or dialogue, the film unfolds through the rich textures of sound and image, winding through trees, water in motion, the rhythms of human and non-human life, and the reverent quiet of ceremony.
Writer-director Darlene Naponse, an Anishinaabe artist and community member from Atikameksheng, opens a deeply personal and cinematic window into her homeland. Through careful attention to gesture, place, and non-verbal storytelling, Aki captures the layered complexity of everyday life on the land, a life defined not by plot, but by presence.
Naponse, whose previous films include Falls Around Her (2018) and Stellar (2022), both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, continues her legacy of weaving cinematic experience with Indigenous worldviews. With Aki, she takes a bold, creative step into a genre-defying space, echoing the contemplative aesthetics of Baraka (1992), Koyaanisqatsi (1982), and Samsara (2011), while firmly rooting the film in her own cultural and geographic context.
The documentary foregrounds land-based practices—fishing, maple syrup harvesting, and medicine gathering not as spectacles, but as living traditions that sustain both community and culture. These scenes unfold alongside reflections on colonialism, ecological degradation, and cultural erasure. Yet Aki is not a film of despair. It is a quietly radical act of remembrance, resilience, and reconnection, a film about memory without nostalgia, resistance without spectacle, and a language beyond words.
A significant contributor to this affective landscape is the film’s original score, composed by Juno Award–winning Cree cellist Cris Derksen. Her music, at once grounded and ethereal, enhances the film’s ambient soundscape and accentuates its emotional resonance. Naponse’s camera lingers with meditative intent: on the crackle of firewood, the scrape of skates on a frozen pond, the steam rising from a pot of sap on the boil. These moments are not just beautiful, they are meaningful, relational, and deeply rooted in place.
More than a documentary, Aki is also a political statement, though not in a conventional, polemical sense. Its politics emerge through form and focus: land as archive, land as speaker. The visible scars of mining and clear-cutting are acknowledged, yet contextualized within a community’s enduring commitment to ecological and cultural renewal. The film was entirely unscripted, shaped instead by Naponse’s intimate understanding of the land and her decision to let the camera become part of the landscape. What we see is what happened that day, uninterrupted, uncurated daily life in all its integrity.
In Aki, the seasons are not mere backdrop; they are storytellers. The changing light, weather, and natural cycles guide the camera’s rhythm and the emotional tempo of the film. Time becomes fluid and circular, echoing Anishinaabe understandings of story and place. We are asked not just to observe, but to listen not to a narrator, but to the land itself.
Ultimately, Aki is a powerful reminder of the deep connections between land, language, and community. Darlene Naponse’s visionary approach shows how cinema can offer more than a window; it can be a bridge. A bridge between worlds, between generations, and between ways of knowing. In bearing witness to her homeland and its people, Aki invites us all to reconsider how we relate to the earth beneath our feet.
It is a privilege to witness this film and to be reminded that the land is not silent. It speaks. We only need to learn how to listen.
Grade: C+
