A 1963 caribou hunt where the hunters never speak — who gets to tell their story?
The people of Unamenshipu (La Romaine), an Innu community in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, are seen but not heard in this richly detailed documentary about the rituals surrounding an Innu caribou hunt. Released in 1960, it’s one of 13 titles in Au Pays de Neufve-France, a series of poetic documentary shorts about life along the St. Lawrence River. Off-camera narration, written by Pierre Perrault, frames the Innu participants through an ethnographic lens. Co-directed by René Bonnière and Perrault, a founding figure of Quebec’s direct cinema movement.
Cinematography
Stunning frozen landscapes that speak louder than the narrator.
Direction
Perrault's poetic lens—beautiful but complicit in silencing.
Director
René Bonnière
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a 1960s Quebecois nationalist project to document 'French America,' the series paradoxically centered French-Canadian identity while marginalizing Indigenous presence.
Perrault would later shift toward letting subjects speak—his 1971 L'Acadie, l'Acadie showed Acadians in their own voices, suggesting he learned from this film's limitations.
CA
