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Bones of Crows

Directed by Marie Clements
Canada, 2022 (fiction, 127 minutes, colour / black and white, Cree / English)
Also known as "L'ombre des corbeaux"
Bones of Crows
Image: © Screen Siren Pictures
Film Description:
"Bones of Crows is told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch Aline Spears as she survives a childhood in Canada's residential school system to continue her family's generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse. She uses her uncanny ability to understand and translate codes into working for a special division of the Canadian Air Force as a Cree code talker in World War II. The story unfolds over 100 years with a cumulative force that propels us into the future."
-- Ayasew Ooskana Pictures (source)

Film Description:
"Marie Clements' Bones of Crows is a powerful indictment of the abuse of Indigenous peoples and a stirring story of extraordinary resilience and resistance. Born in the 1920s into a happy, large family, Aline Spears (played at different ages by Summer Testawich, Grace Dove, and Carla Rae) and her siblings are forcibly removed—through threat and essentially extortion by church and local authorities—from their home and sent to residential schools. There, they are victims of the cruelty of the priests and nuns who run the school. As the film clearly and dramatically points out, this psychological, physical, and cultural abuse was basically official government policy. During World War II, Aline enlists in the military, where, in a great but not widely known historical irony, her contribution is highly valued precisely because she is still fluent in Cree—one of the languages the residential schools strove to eradicate. After the war, Aline returns to Canada to raise her children. Still haunted by the crimes committed against her, she endures years of anguish before she finally has the chance to confront her abusers. [...] Fearless in its denunciation of centuries of oppressive policies by Canadian governments and institutions, Bones of Crows is also a memorable paean to the resilience and determination of those who survived the residential schools—and especially those, like Aline, who sought to bring their oppressors' crimes to light."
-- Steve Gravestock (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by: Marie Clements
Produced by: Marie Clements, Trish Dolman, Christine Haebler, Sam Grana, Aaron Gilbert, Steven Thibault, Noah Segal
Principal Cast: Grace Dove, Phillip Forest Lewitski, Alyssa Wapanatâhk, Michelle Thrush, Glen Gould, Gail Maurice, Carla Rae, Cara Gee, Rémy Girard, Karine Vanasse, Jonathon Whitesell, Patrick Garrow, Summer Testawich, Sierra McRae, Tanaya Beatty, Joshua Odjick, Alanis Obomsawin
Cinematography: Vince Arvidson
Film Editing: Maxime Lahaie
Music: Jesse Zubot, Wayne Lavallee
Production Company: Ayasew Ooskana Pictures, Marie Clements Media, Screen Siren Pictures, Grana Productions
(sources)

Notes about Bones of Crows

(sources)

Quotes by the Director

"As I was writing and then going into production for Bones of Crows, more and more residential school children were being found across Canada in unmarked graves. The film was meant to speak to the multi-generational legacy of the residential school experience—but there was no way of knowing how impactful it would be to be shooting scenes in the Kamloops Residential School while also watching hundreds of people come to the memorial set up outside of the school in response to the bodies of 215 residential school students being found."
-- Marie Clements (source)

"Every single Indigenous person that worked on this film—crew or performer—has their own story, their own family story of residential school. So that kind of gives it a deeper meaning when we come to set and know this is what we're doing today. And we're going to go get it. Not just for ourselves, because we're driven that way anyway as artists, but for our families and for the truth."
-- Marie Clements (source)

"I was definitely looking to tell a multi-generational story [with Bones of Crows]. But we were also looking to tell a story that was motivated by what triggers us, what triggers those memories and to stay authentic with that experience of our parents, our grandparents moving in the modern world to live each day better but also being pulled back or being triggered by their experiences."
-- Marie Clements (source)

Quote by the Director [in French]

"Si les gens apprennent quelque chose [du film Bones of Crows], fantastique. Mais ce que j'espère vraiment, c'est qu'ils ressentent quelque chose, parce que c'est seulement de cette façon qu'on pourra arriver à un changement. Qu'on arrivera à la vérité."
-- Marie Clements (source)

Quote about Bones of Crows

"Marie Clements has begun production on her ambitious, multi-language and multi-scripted, five-part mini-series and feature film Bones of Crows, commissioned by CBC in association with APTN. Written and directed by Clements (Red Snow), the project is being shot in English, with some key scenes in Cree and Ayajuthem, but additional French and Cree language versions will be broadcast with separate air dates for the series and film."
-- Liza Sardi (source)

Quote about Bones of Crows [in French]

"Le film [Bones of Crows] donne vraiment une belle perspective sur la façon dont nos vies changent. Le simple fait [qu'Aline] survive au système des pensionnats est déjà une telle célébration, parce que nous avons perdu tant de nos proches ainsi dans la vraie vie. Et puis ça la suit toute sa vie, elle doit faire face à ce traumatisme, un traumatisme intergénérationnel. Et on voit comment elle le surmonte pour ensuite devenir une matriarche pour ses enfants et pour ses proches."
-- Grace Dove (source)

Publications by the Director about Bones of Crows

Bibliography for Bones of Crows

Articles from Newspapers, Magazines, or News Websites

Web Sites about Bones of Crows

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