The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is delighted to announce the online release of Waseskun, a documentary shot inside the Waseskun Healing Center, a rehabilitation facility for Indigenous male offenders of all ages and from all communities located in the town of Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez in the Lanaudière region of Quebec.
The film will be available for streaming, free and worldwide on nfb.ca, starting May 11th, 2020.
Highlights:
- Waseskun offers an uncensored look at the complex process of rebuilding men at war with themselves.
- The Healing Centre’s philosophy is that healing does not come from erasing one’s past, but by regaining one’s cultural identity and traditional values.
- In Cree, waseskun is the word used to describe the moments just after a storm when the dark clouds begin to part, blue skies appear, and the first rays of sunlight pierce through.
- Granted unprecedented access to the centre, Director Steve Patry focused his lens on the daily lives of those who reside at this unique facility.
- With empathy, but free of naïveté, Patry chronicles the difficult journey of men who have survived hellish family and social situations and now struggle to be reintegrated into society.
- This film is the follow-up to Steve Patry’s De prisons en prisons, nominated for a Jutra Award for Best Documentary in 2015.
