Aki is a film of abundance. The world it envisions and celebrates is lifegiving and beautiful. Most of Aki, a title that translates from Anishinaabemowin (also known as Ojibwe) as “earth or land,” is spent in extreme close-ups of the flowing (or frozen or thawing) river, flowers and the bugs crawling on them, and the several sports played by the community’s youth. The cinematography is rich in capturing the fullness of the land; even the cold Northern Ontario winter is still beautiful. And this is enough. Dialogue and characters or plot would be extraneous. All Darlene Naponse, perhaps the most well-known Anishinaabe filmmaker, needs for her documentary is this beautiful community, the land they live on, and her camera.
That’s not all Aki is, though. As it passes from season to season and from one beauty to another, Naponse reminds us of the havoc that (colonial) industrial anthropocentrism has sown onto our lands. Not unlike the urbanized pillow shots of Yasujirō Ozu’s films, Naponse and her very small crew insert periodic reminders of the giant factories and mines not far away. Unlike Ozu, these shots don’t impart a warm feeling like dew in the morning, but instead remind one of a certain kind of modernity’s disruption (a modernity that, in practice, was enacted only through colonization and occupation).
The enormous metal structures intrude from the same ground like disruptive aliens, and she always shoots them from afar — as if they were some kind of unsatiated monster devouring all that comes before them. The deer scat is more worthy of a close-up than these industrial wastelands. One memorable shot shows a handful of birds, maybe ravens, dancing in the wind before a giant metal silo of some sort. The birds disappear behind the building as they move from one side to the other in their air-dance, and every time they disappear from view, a small part of the viewer — or at least this viewer — doubts they will reappear.
Aki meanders playfully with the passing of the seasons, and the film is divided into four parts to reflect these quarterly changes. Each chapter seems to stretch into lengthy, patient visual poems, never in a rush to move to the next location or to see the next animal. Naponse takes her time before letting humans and non-human animals into the picture, knowing they would add a certain kind of energy that one doesn’t need to be as patient with. It’s uncomfortable at times, too. How long will it take the ice to melt? How many flowers need a close-up? How long will viewers need to endure this aerial footage of trees patted in snow? The hardship and chronological experience of time passing is also crucial. Without it, everything becomes postcard picturesque and loses its grander transcendence. And the jump cuts employed add another layer to this insightful use of time. When a rabbit is being skinned, for instance, these cuts move quickly past the actual skinning process (bypassing more sensitive images that could have emerged) and ironically draw more attention to the sensation of time passing.
It’s also very challenging to convey my full spectrum of thoughts without noting a very personal response to Naponse’s film. I come from a family with Anishinaabe blood. The phrasing here is intentionally careful because I’ve always been hesitant to identify with the tribe: I am not a member (in the process), but I have close family, including my mom’s two brothers and all of my cousins, who are registered members of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. There are two “twin” Sault Ste. Maries. One is located in Michigan, where I live; the other is in Northern Ontario, not terribly far from Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation where Aki takes place. The trees look the same. The bitter cold is too familiar. The maple syrup taps could be the ones my family uses. And we even play the same sports. Seeing the “Ojibwa Casino” brochure on an older member of the community’s fridge door really hammers in how familiar this world feels. I don’t fully understand what this familiarity means for me just yet, or if it matters to anyone else; I do know it made me pay really close attention to the few slivers of spoken Anishinaabemowin. But Naponse’s attention to these details, to capturing an essence rather than a story, is what makes her film so remarkable. Aki is like a prayer in this way: beautiful, personal, and uncomfortable all at once.
Published as part of TIFF 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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