Quebec director's film falls short of Oscar nomination

Last Updated: Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:45 AM ET Comments2Recommend10

CBC News

While a Canadian film about an Inuit tuberculosis patient did not score an Academy Award nomination Thursday, its director says he's honoured to have come close to an Oscar nod.

Quebec director Benoît Pilon's film Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life ), a story about an Inuit hunter in a Quebec sanatorium, was Canada's entry for a foreign film Oscar this year.

The film had made the shortlist of nine nomination contenders in the best foreign language film category, but it did not make the final five nominated films announced Thursday morning in Los Angeles.

Still, Pilon told CBC News he was surprised and honoured to see his film on the shortlist, adding that the film has already secured some distribution deals.

"Already we've had some good news, like the film has been taken for distribution around the U.S.," he said Wednesday.

"It was also sold to Belgium and Spain, and there are some other countries that are interested, and it's going to open in English Canada in February.

"Pilon's French and Inuktitut-language film follows Tivii, an Inuit hunter who was taken from his Baffin Island home to a sanatorium in Quebec City for treatment during the tuberculosis epidemic of the 1950s.

Tivii, played by Igloolik, Nunavut-based actor Natar Ungalaaq, appears to be giving up on life until a nurse arranges for a young Inuit orphan named Kaki to move to the sanatorium.

Tivii begins teaching the boy traditional ways and regains his will to live.

Ungalaaq told CBC News his grandfather was sent south for tuberculosis treatment and recovered, but others were not as fortunate. He said he hopes the film will help heal wounds from the past.

"We made this film for the people who didn't survive it, but there's a lot of victims … still living," he said.

Pilon said not many Canadians know about the terrible impacts of the tuberculosis epidemic in Canada's North.

"I did my own research, I read a few books, and I learned more about this whole episode and I was really moved by all these stories that I was reading," he said.

Ce qu'il faut pour vivre won several awards at last year's Montreal World Film Festival, including the audience favourite award and the Grand Jury Prize.

Ungalaaq, who also starred in Zacharias Kunuk's acclaimed film Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner, has won best actor awards at international festivals for his role in Pilon's film.