Not a Western but a Northern, Nettie Wild's astonishing nonfiction film transports us to the wilderness, not as backdrop but as a vivid elemental force that dominates the experience of both the indigenous peoples and the settlers who carve out their lives there. More than 1000 miles by road from Vancouver, British Columbia, or 130 miles east of Juneau by air, the traditional lands of the Tahltan First Nation encompass the majestic Stikine River, ancient glaciers, tiny communities and magnificent vistas.

Without comment, Wild watches as a helicopter painstakingly lowers a 16,000-pound transmission tower into place, another notch in the grid girding the landscape. Rather than a polemic, this is a poetic film, an immersive, rhapsodic meditation on a place and its people. They include diamond drillers, hunters, and the Tahltan, men and women of different cultures and mindsets, but all in the shadow of a stunning, timeless and implacable beauty ("Koneline" means "Our land beautiful" in the Tahltan tongue).

"Transcendent, breathtaking spectacle....Wild lets the camera hunt for art in every frame, mining veins of abstract beauty." Brian D. Johnson, Maclean's

Winner: Best Canadian Documentary, HotDocs Film Festival

Nettie Wild – Director (January 6 & 7 only)