Fourteen-year-old Ella, a First Nations teenager, is determined to travel British Columbia's Inside Passage by kayak to honor her recently lost activist uncle and to testify on his behalf to protect their homeland waters from an oil pipeline's oil tanker traffic. Paddling and camping along the Great Bear Rainforest, Ella realizes that she has never truly connected with her Kitasoo nation's natural wonders and traditions. Ella must confront her insecurities about her identity while enduring the often comic mishaps of the mixed crew of family members who accompany her. The spirits of her uncle and ancestors keep them on course to the island of Klemtu even as Ella experiences a very real sense of fear and running out of time. Together they must reconcile with the past in order to protect their future from environmental destruction. Starring Indigenous singer-songwriter, youth activist, and international speaker Ta'Kaiya Blaney.
Zoe Leigh Hopkins is a Canadian Heiltsuk/Mohawk writer and film director who started her career in acting in 2009 and later pursued filmmaking. Zoe was Senior Producer on Venturing Forth — a documentary series about Aboriginal youth. She was a Fellow at the Sundance Institute's January 2004 Screenwriter's Lab.
"[A] soulful gesture free of artifice and grandiosity. That it comes with activism attached is not a bonus, but its very point." - Globe and Mail