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How Director Elle-Maija Tailfeathers Discovered a Path to Healing on the Frontlines of the Opioid Crisis
Jennie Punter, provided by
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Director and producer Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers opens her documentary “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy” with a peaceful, slow-motion scene of buffalo calves grazing alongside their mothers while the voice of the filmmaker’s mother, a family doctor, is heard gently speaking to a mother about her baby.
A coproduction between Tailfeathers’ Seen Through Woman Productions and the National Film Board of Canada, which is also selling the film, “Kímmapiiyipitssini” is a chronicle of her community’s steady efforts to confront its substance-use crisis and heal by cultivating empathy through harm reduction.
Samuel Goldwyn Films Nabs Rights to Night Raiders From EP Taika Waititi May 5, 2021
According to Deadline, Samuel Goldwyn Film has successfully acquired the North American distribution rights to Danis Goulet’s directorial debut feature titled
Night Raiders, which is executive produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi, who is currently in production at Australia for Marvel Studios’
Thor: Love and Thunder. The dystopian sci-fi thriller drama had its world premiere last March at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.
“We are thrilled to partner with Samuel Goldwyn Films on the US release of NIGHT RAIDERS following its premiere in Berlin,” Goulet said in a statement. “The film is so relevant to all of North America, and we are so grateful to have this opportunity to bring it to US audiences with a company that has a proven commitment to original voices and unique perspectives.”
Conventional abstinence-based treatment has not been effective in saving lives, says Tailfeathers, and so the grief-stricken Blackfoot community turned to a harm-reduction strategy in recent years.
As Tailfeathers documentary Kimmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy shows, that shift in strategy saved lives, in part through supervised consumption and the Blackfoot practice known as kimmapiiyipitssini – pronounced GEE-maa-bee-bit-sin and meaning giving kindness to each other.
Tailfeathers said many on the reserve initially weren t open to the concept of harm reduction, which doesn t necessarily require users to abstain.
Some felt methods such as opioid agonist therapy, which treats addiction through medications, were a form of enabling.