FESTIVAL REVIEW
In the Heart of the South is a story born out of guilt, following an artist who has finally achieved the success she wanted, only to find herself haunted by what it took to get there. It is an unquestionably brave act of self-reflection from Inuit director Nyla Innuksuk, who, in her second feature, creates a surrogate for herself in Yura Ivalu (Anna Lambe). After being offered the opportunity to make her first film, Yura pitches a story from her childhood, when she and her friend Sesi (Zorga Qaunaq) became lost in a storm. But as Yura begins developing her version of what happened, Sesi, who has led a considerably more difficult life, suddenly knocks on the door of Yura’s comfortable Toronto apartment, forcing her to confront just how much of the story she has claimed as her own.
Yura is hardly a flattering reflection. She is selfish, dishonest, and immensely flawed, turning the film into a self-takedown as Innuksuk seems to work through her own relationship with success, identity, and the nagging fear that, underneath it all, she might not have a story worth telling on her own. She sees Sesi as the cool one, and ultimately everything she wishes she could be: unembarrassed by her upbringing, effortlessly commanding a room, making friends and drawing attention in ways Yura cannot manage even with constant effort. That admiration gradually curdles into jealousy, which reveals how insecure Yura remains about the culture she has simultaneously distanced herself from and built an artistic identity around. Lambe and Qaunaq, who previously worked together on North of North, play into that contrast, capturing how their old affection now comes with years of resentment and disdain.
Yura’s guilt follows her everywhere, whispered in her ear through an ominous score and manifested through nightmares, blurred faces, and increasingly frightening visions that make us wonder what of what we are seeing is real. Those devices eventually become repetitive, and some dialogue sounds strangely artificial. That artificiality becomes particularly amusing when a background news report suddenly mentions the increasing use of AI amongst writers, a detail that may mean absolutely nothing, but in a film so preoccupied with an artist’s guilt over how she creates her work, it makes one wonder whether Innuksuk is slipping another little confession in there.
The filmmaking industry receives its share of the criticism too, particularly through producers whose enthusiasm for Indigenous voices comes with an uncomfortable amount of condescension and opportunism. Some of the satire here is quite funny, but it also feeds into one of the film’s more interesting contradictions. For a story about the guilt of taking somebody else’s experiences and making them your own, almost everyone we meet still exists primarily in relation to Yura. Sesi is the notable exception, particularly during a terrific monologue about a past trauma and some funny exchanges with the influencer played by Alexander Nunez.
Ultimately, In the Heart of the South is most surprising in how far Innuksuk is willing to take the criticism of her protagonist and, by implication, herself. Yura eventually admits to Sesi what she has done, but also admits to herself how diluted her relationship with her own culture has become, sharing some of the same prejudices as the white people she so readily condemns. It is an interesting angle, but more importantly, one that feels genuinely authentic, coming directly from an Indigenous artist wrestling with her own relationship to her culture, the industry around her, and the compromises she may have made along the way. Yet the film also suggests that the most interesting stories may, in fact, be those around her, and now that she has gotten this one out of the way, perhaps she can turn her focus toward telling them. With their blessing and help, of course.
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
