VANCOUVER, BC (June 6, 2024)— Wabung Anung Films Ltd. and Sea to Sky Entertainment Inc. have partnered to produce the feature documentary The Storyteller based on the life of Richard Wagamese, one of Canada’s most beloved writers and storytellers. The award-winning creative team includes Anishinaabe filmmaker Jim Compton as Principal Producer and Cree filmmaker Jules Arita Koostachin as Director, and both as Writers and Executive Producers. The documentary will be pitched by Compton accompanied by Koostachin at the Indigenous Screen Summit at the Banff World Media Festival on June 9.
The Storyteller looks at the roads traveled by Richard Wagamese, who was born in Wabasseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario, and became one of Canada’s foremost storytellers and writers with a career spanning over 35 years. His works often mirrored his own life as he was forever searching for a place to belong and reclaim his identity from the immense trauma he experienced in his early life.
The Storyteller touches on the impact of intergenerational victims of Residential Schools and the Sixties Scoop on Indigenous people, and focuses on Richard Wagamese’s story as a self-educated storyteller and writer, as well as his childhood trauma, which resulted in PTSD and alcoholism, that he never overcame despite his literary success. Wagamese wrote 18 books including Indian Horse, which was released as a feature film in 2018. He found healing through books, writing, music, nature, people and reconnection to his roots, and redemption through his work as an award-winning author, columnist, broadcaster, commentator and keynote speaker. The Storyteller is Wagamese’s story about how he survived, and what he learned as a human being, a man and an Ojibway during his 61 years on earth.
Award-winning Indigenous documentarian and filmmaker Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin (Cree) brings her unique brand of creative storytelling as Director, Writer and Executive Producer of the documentary. Jules is from Attawapiskat First Nation in Ontario, and completed her PhD at the UBC Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice with a focus on Indigenous documentary practices. She carries extensive experience working in Indigenous communities in varying capacities such as counseling, consulting, teaching and management, and storytelling. Jules’ credits include her award-winning features WaaPaKe and Broken Angel.
“As an Indigenous filmmaker, child of a mother and relatives who endured residential school, and mother of four sons, I am deeply committed to healing by sharing Richard Wagamese’s story, and speaking the truth about how colonial violence has impacted our communities. We can make a profound difference in our families and our communities both now and into the future as this documentary will show. Sharing Richard’s story with the world will ensure his experience is heard. I am committed to making sure his knowledge and wisdom are treated with an ethic of care and dignity,” says Koostachin.
A member of the Keeseekoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, Jim Compton (Anishinaabe) brings his decades of experience as President and Principal Producer of award-winning Wabung Anung Films, to his role as Principal Producer and Writer for the documentary. Jim worked with Richard Wagamese as a journalist at CBC and on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996. Jim is based in Winnipeg and was one of the founders of APTN.
“In our Anishinaabe culture, we are taught to honour the Warriors in our midst. Richard Wagamese is one of those Warriors. Through his gift of story and storytelling he has opened the world into the soul of the Ojibway. As with all great Warriors, his story is one of note. It is a story of great struggle, battling demons in a world that only sought to destroy and conquer that way of life. It is now up to us to honour the accomplishments, the gifts, and the undying perseverance of a great man. We honour him as he looks down upon us from the stars. By doing this, his story and stories will be retold and remembered, and can be an inspiration for all those great young Warriors to follow,” says Compton.
Other key creatives include Producer Shauna Hardy of Sea to Sky Entertainment, Stephen Campanelli (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Gran Torino) as Cinematographer and Dennis Foon as Story Consultant. Executive Producers include Stephen Campanelli and Shauna Hardy, as well as Compton’s partners R. Todd Ivey and Jeremy Edwardes of Wabung Anung Films. The documentary will be complimented by an interactive educational component and an audience and community impact engagement plan produced by Charlene SanJenko (Splatsin), an Indigenous Storyteller, Impact Producer, and Media Visionary from the Splatsin Band of the Shuswap Nation.
Wagamese’s book Indian Horse, was adapted into an award-winning feature-length film in 2018 based on, (2018), which was adapted into a film directed by Campanelli and adapted by Foon. The film premiered at TIFF, played at over 30 international film festivals winning 19 awards, and became the number one independent English language box office film of the year in Canada.
The Storyteller will be shot in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The team has amassed access to several important interview subjects and media elements to create a rich and significant documentary to share the tremendous storytelling and writing gifts, and compelling complexities of Richard Wagamese’s life story. It was also recently announced that the partners behind The Storyteller have optioned Richard Wagamese’s book Ragged Company and the feature film and series are in development.
