Inuuvunga - I Am Inuk, I Am Alive

Hockey, hip hop, hunting and midnight Ski-Doo rides. Welcome to Inukjuak.

It's the final year of high school for eight teens at Innalik school in this remote town in northern Quebec. Through an initiative of the National Film Board, these eight students have been selected to document this pivotal year of their lives. To teach them some basics, the NFB has dispatched filmmakers Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin. The result of their collaboration is Inuuvunga, a vibrant and utterly contemporary view of life in Canada's North.

The students use their new film skills to address a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap with their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. Throughout, they reveal an unusual and fascinating mix of southern and northern cultures. Kids listen to hip-hop music and engage in traditional fox trapping. A schoolroom floor is the scene of the gutting of a freshly killed seal.

Seamless and startling, Inuuvunga paints a rich portrait of coming of age in an Inuit town and helps to dispel the myths of northern isolation and desolation. Instead, we discover a place where hope and strength overcome struggle.