Is Village Keeper an instant Canadian film classic?

Village Keeper is a new Canadian film that follows a woman named Jean, played by Olunike Adeliyi, as she navigates motherhood and trauma while trying to break an intergenerational cycle of domestic abuse within her family.

It's the feature directorial debut by Canadian filmmaker Karen Chapman, and it was made in only 12 days while Chapman was eight months pregnant. The film is now nominated for seven Canadian Screen Awards, including best motion picture and best original screenplay.

Today on Commotion, film critic Sarah-Tai Black joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the unique ways in which the film addresses its themes.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: What should people know about the story being told in this movie?

Sarah-Tai: Village Keeper is a film that really knows that talking about intimate partner violence and talking about abuse outside of some of the more exploitative narratives that we're more used to on-screen can, ironically, sometimes be more uncomfortable than those actual reductive depictions of abuse and harm. And I think that is especially true when it comes to witnessing that happen to women and girls on-screen, and especially when it's Black women and girls. 

I think it's also a film about the weight of the past, and the present and the future of not just violence, but intergenerational discord and healing. It's also about the process of feeling at home — not just in your body, not just your spirit, but where you literally live, you know? I think that a lot of narratives that focus on healing, like Village Keeper does, also kind of have this expectation of upward mobility as part of that journey. So to see a film that focuses on healing, specifically on a family that lives in a lower-income, working class neighborhood like Lawrence Heights, without having the narrative imperative of making them leave that place, of having that community be home, of being this interconnected community, is really lovely. It's just a lovely film. Can't recommend it enough.

Elamin: Well, the big conversation I've been hearing has been about the performance of Olunike Adeliyi. People might know her from The Porter, from The Fire Inside, more recently from Morningside. She plays Jean. She's nominated for performance in a leading role [at the Canadian Screen Awards]. How was she in this role?

Sarah-Tai: She's so amazing. I've had the privilege of engaging with this film in different ways a few times since it first came out, even on the festival circuit. And being able to watch her performance several times, she just has such a commanding presence, but also a grace to this role of Jean that is just so emblematic of so many working class, racialized women in Toronto and places like it.

The film opens with this scene of her commuting to work on the TTC, which so many of us do every day, several times a day. And it's this really beautiful, poetic opening scene that takes this incredibly ordinary moment of labour, that labour that's so often invisible, and it takes the time and the care to really find the shapes and the contours and the beauty of that very everyday, super regular-degular working class experience of just getting to your job to kind of get by. 

Elamin: Out of the five nominees for performance in a supporting role, three of them are for this film, which is quite an incredible haul. You mentioned this movie is dealing with themes like loss, survival, domestic abuse and intergenerational trauma. Was there a theme that really resonated with you? 

Sarah-Tai: Yeah. I think, first of all, pack your tissues. Every time I watch this, I just cry and cry — but in this great release kind of way. Because I think for me, what's most impactful about Village Keeper is experiencing it in relation to this long on-screen history of racialized women, and in this case specifically Black women, being portrayed as caretakers and carers. There is, of course, a truth in that for many of us. 

But at the same time, a lot of those representations are really reductive, or even unproductive or harmful, and they've continued to kind of sustain themselves over time. So with Village Keeper, it's just such a humanist film in the way that it witnesses the truth of that reality, while also kind of pushing back against that stereotype or that expectation of Black women giving themselves over wholly at the expense of themselves, you know? This innate demand for Black women to take part in their own disposability.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Sarah-Tai Black produced by Ty Callender.