Issues of performance, trauma, and envy intersect with questions about what it means to be (a good) Indigenous person (or Native) in In The Heart of The South (2026).
Writer/director Nyla Innuksuk’s film cleverly uses meta elements to interrogate, tease, and confront these notions in a film that appears to be the byproduct of its own narrative.
Yura (Anna Lambe) is an up and coming Inuk performance artist whose latest interactive piece on the residential school system, Class of 1967, has gotten her a lot of press and attention. Yura was already something of a known entity because of her traumatic childhood back story, in which she and another girl were stranded out on the ice overnight. The next step, and ultimate goal – according to her agent (and every other “influential” character in the film) – is to make a feature movie, preferably something with a genre hook.
Yura’s ambition and her complicated history are thrown into question with the reappearance of her childhood friend, Sesi (Zorga Qaunaq) – the other girl from her childhood story.
The two women are diametrically opposed: Yura is eloquent, political, and knows how to engage white settlers who rush to compliment her art (while simultaneously appropriating and fetishizing it). Meanwhile, Sesi is abrasive, crude, and unpolished; she’s not “the perfect Native” that donors, gallery owners, and movie producers want. But there’s also an unpractised authenticity about her that attracts people into her orbit; she’s less rehearsed than Yura, whose tightly wound persona threatens to unravel the longer Sesi stays.
Sesi’s reappearance after a long absence also disrupts Yura’s workflow at a key time. Sesi turns up just as Yura is given a tight deadline to produce her film’s outline. It’s a huge opportunity, but Charlotte (Tara Nicodemo) the woman who runs the studio The Quiet Loud, is adamant about her expectations, which includes a strong genre/horror elements as a selling hook.
The further In the Heart of the South progresses, the more evident it becomes that the film we’re watching is the result of Yura’s efforts, even as she becomes increasingly unreliable as a protagonist. The longer Sesi is around, the more Yura loses control of the narrative: not only does she suspect that Sesi is stealing her ideas to create her own opportunities; more and more questions arise about the truth of Yura’s backstory as a piece of potentially problematic fiction.
Since the audience is aligned with Yura, Innuksuk and cinematographer Ann Tipper reflect this uncertainty in the form of both visual and auditory dream/hallucination sequences, including one in which Sesi threatens to cut off Yura’s finger in the kitchen before the digit is collected by a wolf.
It’s clear that Yura’s guilty conscience is colluding with her doubts and insecurities to undermine her career (and sanity) at a particularly vulnerable moment. While these kinds of narratives, in which the audience is meant to question if a female character is going insane, have become familiar over the last decade, intersecting those conventions with notions of authenticity around Inuit identity help In The Heart of the South stand out.*
*This feels like another meta element given that Lambe had a role on the late/great Trickster adaptation, a text that was notoriously plagued with controversy about (false) Indigenous identity and how white settlers insert themselves into other people’s stories.
It doesn’t hurt that the lead performance by Lambe is so committed. The North of North actress immerses herself in the role, embracing the prickly and sometimes unlikeable aspects of Yura’s identity, especially as she becomes more desperate to succeed and distinguish herself from her (often more successful) contemporaries. The interrogation of what it means to be Inuk and stay true to your identity while also attempting to be exactly what (well-meaning, but uncomfortably appropriative) white settlers with money want is incredibly compelling. A great example is the scene when Yura is first introduced to Charlotte and the woman rudely makes Yura wait as she writes an email. The room then quietly fills with silent women who sit in on the meeting, outnumbering Yura eight to one in a beat that plays out like a cross between a ceremonial sacrifice and a show of intimidation).
At times the genre elements feel awkwardly shoehorned in, almost as if Innuksuk herself was forced to introduce horror trappings at the behest of producers in order to sell it. Regardless, the film’s meta commentary is fascinating and does pay-off when the film moves into a full blown mirror/doppelgänger climax when Yura and Sesi finally confront each other and the secrets of the past are brought violently into the present.
It’s mostly satisfying, although the film is best in the uncomfortable and confronting moments when white allies are being not-so-subtly mocked and critiqued. It’s confronting to see yourself reflected back on screen and, considering the vast majority of the audience will likely not be Indigenous, the sharp sting of Innuksuk’s criticism is both valid, cutting, and necessary.
Can I say I’m a fan without sounding like I’ve missed the point or that I’m as bad as the settler assholes in the film? I’ll take the rick and champion In the Heart of the South as a Canadian film that is definitely worth checking out. 4/5
In the Heart of the South premiered at TIFF 2026. Release information TBD
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