Sightlines · reception
How Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was received
2002 · Zacharias Kunuk · Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner on Sightlines
The arc
It arrived a sensation — the Caméra d'Or at Cannes 2001 — and its stature has only grown: in 2015 a TIFF poll of filmmakers and critics voted it the greatest Canadian film ever made.
What’s debated
The main friction is its nearly-three-hour, oral-storytelling pace — 'hypnotic epic' to devotees, an endurance test to first-timers who came for the famous run.
Its footprint
The image everyone carries out of it — a man sprinting naked across the spring sea ice — is one of the most referenced shots in 21st-century cinema, and the film itself is a founding touchstone of Indigenous filmmaking worldwide.
Where it stands
A 'you must see this' of the 2000s canon: routinely called the greatest Canadian film and the cornerstone of Inuit cinema.
Did you know? It was the first feature film ever written, directed, and acted entirely in Inuktitut, made with a largely non-professional cast from the Igloolik community where the thousand-year-old legend it retells is set.