Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner · reception & legacy
2002 · Zacharias Kunuk
How Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner has been received, argued over, and remembered.
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.