Sk+te'kmujue'katik (At the Place of Ghosts)

Directed by L'nu filmmaker Bretten Hannam (Wildhood, TIFF ’21), Sk+te'kmujue'katik (At the Place of Ghosts) is an eerie thriller focusing on two Mi’kmaw brothers confronting their past trauma.

Mise’l (Blake Alec Miranda) and Antle (Forrest Goodluck) are siblings who have drifted apart after experiencing unimaginable horrors in their shared past. But when Mise’l returns to their home community following an unexpected visit by a malicious spirit, the pair must put their estrangement aside in order to rid themselves of the ghosts that haunt them. In order to do so, they will have to journey through Sk+te'kmujue'katik, a forest where time collapses on itself.

In these woods, their past is unveiled before them as they encounter ancestors they’ve never met, younger versions of themselves, and future iterations of their loved ones. Through it all, they must return to — and unravel — a critical moment in their lives.

For their third feature, Hannam has created a work that is not only a ghost story, but an interweaving of Mi’kmaw culture and the colonial history of the East Coast. With a gorgeously haunting score from Polaris Music Prize and Juno Award–winning musician Jeremy Dutcher, and beautifully shot by Guy Godfree (Sharp Corner, TIFF ’24; Brother, TIFF ’22), Sk+te'kmujue'katik (At the Place of Ghosts) is a genre-bending, otherworldly drama.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Content advisory: coarse language, violence, frightening scenes, mature theme