Twice Colonized

Twice Colonized
Directed by	Lin Alluna
Written by	Lin Alluna Aaju Peter
Produced by	Emile Hertling Péronard Alethea Arnaquq-Baril Stacey Aglok MacDonald Bob Moore
Starring	Aaju Peter
Cinematography	Lin Alluna David Bauer Glauco Bermudez Iris Ng
Edited by	Mark Bukdahl
Music by	Olivier Alary Johannes Malfatti Celina Kalluk
Production companies	Ánorâk Film Red Marrow Media EyeSteelFilm
Release date	January 23, 2023 (2023-01-23) (Sundance)
Running time	91 minutes
Countries	Canada Denmark Greenland
Languages	English Danish Greenlandic Inuktitut

Twice Colonized is a documentary film, directed by Lin Alluna and released in 2023. A coproduction of companies from Canada, Denmark and Greenland, the film profiles Aaju Peter, an Inuk lawyer and activist who has lived in both Greenland and Nunavut, profiling both her lifelong fight for justice for Inuit peoples and the personal struggles and traumas she dealt with along the way.

The film premiered in January 2023 at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It had its Danish premiere in March as the opening film of the 2023 CPH:DOX film festival, and its Canadian premiere in April as the opening film of the 2023 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

The film was broadcast by CBC Television on September 13, 2023, as the season premiere of the documentary series The Passionate Eye.

Production

The film was made over seven years. Canadian filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril was one of the film's producers; she had previously made the 2016 film Angry Inuk, which had also started out as a documentary about Peter, but evolved into an issue-based film including but not entirely centred on Peter, as Arnaquq-Baril struggled to depict more personal side of Peter's life.

Critical response

Guy Lodge of Variety wrote that "Twice Colonized doesn’t treat [Peter's] personal life as a background to her professional one, or vice versa. Rather, the film holds both narratives in balance, each informing the other, and both equally essential to understanding this defiantly singular woman. As a character study, then, Twice Colonized has a curiosity and a complexity that distinguish it from various other admiring activist portraits in the documentary sphere: Formidable as Peter’s achievements are, Alluna isn’t out merely to gild them. For her part, Peter is reluctant to be made either a symbol or a martyr on camera, as she repeatedly corrects those who patronize or romanticize her mission to secure rights and recognition for her people from the cultures that colonized them."

Wendy Ide of Screen Daily wrote that "As the story unfolds, Peter courageously decides to harness her traumas and use them in a positive way, as the foundations for a far-reaching exploration of the impact of colonisation on communities like her own. In doing so, she comes to realise just how much of the colonisation process occurs in the minds of those who are colonised – her own included. Peter finally leaving her abusive partner is a satisfying story moment for the film, but nothing captures her spirit to quite the same extent as a shot of her dancing through her pain, fiercely and defiantly, alone in her kitchen."

Carly Brascoupé of Exclaim! wrote that "Twice Colonized is a poignant documentary that is both heartrending and buoyant, a glimpse at how to navigate life from an inspirational and thought-provoking perspective. It is a clear reminder that successes can be dealt with in grief's silences and significant failures are a necessary texture of daily life."

Awards

The film won the Camera Justitia Award at the Movies That Matter documentary festival in The Hague.

Olivier Alary and Johannes Malfatti received a Prix Iris nomination for Best Original Music in a Documentary at the 25th Quebec Cinema Awards in 2023. The film was shortlisted for the Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary, and Alary and Malfatti were nominated for Best Original Music in a Documentary, at the 12th Canadian Screen Awards in 2024.

External links

• Twice Colonized at IMDb