The 2021 FIN Atlantic International Film Festival will showcase the talents of visionary filmmakers from across Atlantic Canada, the country and beyond, from September 16 to 23.Award-winning feature-length documentaries by Indigenous and Acadian crea
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.
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It’s also important.
The two-hour film takes a look at the opioid crisis on the Kainai First Nation and how members of the community have chosen trust and empathy as foundational approaches toward saving lives and creating successful harm-reduction strategies.
Tailfeathers, who has been writing, producing and directing films for 10 years and has an extensive acting resumé, lives in Vancouver, but her family roots run deep into the Blackfoot reserve 200 kilometres south of Calgary.
Her mother, Esther Tailfeathers, has been a doctor on the reserve for two decades and plays a large role in the film. Through many conversations with her mom and seeing the devastation of the opioid crisis up-close a cousin overdosed and died Tailfeathers knew she had to tell the story of her community.