Dystopian Futures: Night Raiders
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Science Fiction Against the Margins. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In-person: Q&A with filmmaker Danis Goulet moderated by author and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Professor Kathleen McHugh.
Pumzi (2009)
Set 35 years after World War III, during the Water War, in Maitu Community, East African Territory, Pumzi is the story of Asha, who lives in this indoor and fully sustainable community. A depleted planet, devoid of vegetation, has forced the community to be 100 percent self-sufficient; residents must recycle their sweat and urine, turning it into drinking water. When Asha, an employee at the virtual natural history museum, discovers a package of soil with a high water content, she breaks protocol and plants a tree seed. Pumzi brings to the forefront the inextricable link between authoritarian rule and the power struggle for environmental resources, and within those tensions, the possibility of individual dreams of a replenished green planet.
DCP, color, 21 min. Director/Screenwriter: Wanuri Kahiu. With: Kudzani Moswela, Nicole Bailey, Chantelle Burger.
Night Raiders (2021)
Children are the most vulnerable and, as a result, the most valuable members of Night Raiders’ dystopian society. Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and her young daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) have taken refuge in the woods in order to escape a military-controlled state that regulates the lives of children. When Niska encounters a group of Cree who have been organizing raids to save children captured by the government, she must weigh the decision to act as an individual and protect only her daughter, or join the vigilantes and fight on behalf of everyone’s families. The film was nominated for 11 Canadian Screen Awards, winning six. “I think we're on the precipice of a golden age of Indigenous cinema,” filmmaker Danis Goulet, who is Cree/Metis, told the press during the film’s release. Through cinematic allegory, Night Raiders’ speculative future unpacks a traumatic past experienced by Indigenous people and the children who survived North America’s residential school era. The film’s Cree-led resistance forges an alliance across generations, cultivating a collective knowledge that will act as the group’s best weapon against the totalitarian state and a colonial past to reclaim their future.
DCP, color, 101 min. Director/Screenwriter: Danis Goulet. With: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Brooklyn Letexier-Hart, Alex Tarrant.
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