Two older women and a young man take an annual trip to an island where they dry fish, expecting to be taken home before the water freezes.  When they fail to return at the expected time, and after the oldest woman passes away, the boy and his grandmother must find ways to cope on their own.  Before Tomorrow is the third in a trilogy of films (beginning with The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen), made by contemporary Inuit natives as a way of recapturing a sense of their past.  This one is the feature debut of Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau of the Arnait Video Collective, based on the novel For Morgendagen by Danish writer Jørn Riel.  It is a beautiful and intimate story, and the tenderness between grandmother and grandson is palpable and moving, as when she encourages him to speak bravely of his first seal hunt, asking him to elaborate on his simple tale, and invest it with a heroic quality.   (more…)

My first day at Sundance is extremely incomparable to my first day doing anything else. It wasn’t as drug-induced as getting my wisdom teeth taken out, nor was it as fun as my first race in alpine skiing. It was, despite the overuse of the word, unique. I have the largest collection of tickets, one of which was to the most beautiful movie Before Tomorrow.

Detailing the story of this family, Before Tomorrow goes into the lives of Inuits in the mid 19th century, following their every move from underwater shots up to their sea kayaks to shots following the two main characters, a grandmother and her courageous grandson, in caves and the great white north. The shots were unbelievably beautiful, the music (while redundant) fit extremely well with the emotion of the film, as the singer kept asking why do we have to die (paraphrased). The story line was actually put together using inspiration which co-director Marie-Hélène Cousineau took from actual Inuit stories of a grandfather as well as a book written by John Riel. The other co-director, Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, was actually the lead actress in the film.

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