Limit Is the Sky is an unflinchingly honest portrait of a new generation of youth: diverse, ambitious, and driven by the seductive lure of big cash and the lifestyle it buys. The film follows six young Canadians, including refugees from the Middle East and Africa, who come to Fort McMurray, a city of immense sky and dusty winds. It is also the capital of the third-largest oil reserve in the world. “Fort Mac,” as it’s known, becomes a testing ground for these young dreamers as they struggle with their own perceptions of money, glory and self-worth, amid plummeting oil prices, an unpredictable economy and, most recently, a devastating wildfire.

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Julia Ivanova, this nuanced and intimate feature-length documentary explores the lives of a diverse group of young dreamers whose search for money, meaning and identity leads them to a remote town in Northern Canada: Fort McMurray, the capital city of the world’s third-largest oil reserves. Shot over several years, Limit Is the Sky follows the hopeful young workers as they do their best to join the ranks of the highly paid oil-field labourers who’ve made Fort Mac a boomtown. But when the boomtown goes bust, thanks to plummeting oil prices, and a massive wildfire threatens the very existence of the town, these “gold-collar workers” find themselves in an unexpectedly tough spot.

The film follows Max, a Lebanese barber; KingDeng, a Sudanese rapper; Sable, a determined, hard-working beauty from Edmonton; Patrick, a would-be Hollywood screenwriter; Mucharata, an unstoppable nanny-turned-heavy-haul-driver from the Philippines; and Andrew, an altruistic mechanic, as they try to jump-start their adult lives in the only place on Earth where truck drivers make $250,000 a year. But the lucrative oil-patch jobs prove harder to nab than expected; and when the bottom falls out of the oil market, each character finds him- or herself suddenly stranded at a precipice where once lay the path of their now disrupted plans.

Their desires and drives drastically vary in magnitude: from building a fashion empire in the Philippines to living up to the conservative values of a Lebanese father; from sharing a history as a Sudanese war-child through rap to feeding the Canadian poor. While Max, Sable, Andrew, Patrick, KingDeng and Mucharata intensely try to catch the golden bird of fortune by its tail, destiny conspires against their plans. An anti-pipeline movement grows in Canada and the US; celebrities bash the global environmental impact of the oil sands; and finally, the world’s oil prices experience a phenomenal collapse. Seemingly out of the blue, Fort McMurray is turned upside down by the dwindling oil industry.

And yet this group are still only in their twenties or early thirties, and their experiences in the oil sands are just early chapters in lives they are determined to build on their own terms. They came to Northern Alberta looking for money, but instead they found themselves. And now, after several years of striving, their time in the oil sands is up. What they leave behind in the devastated landscape of the Canadian North, however, will endure for a long time to come, even as the threat of catastrophic wildfire looms on the horizon.

Limit Is the Sky approaches global issues—economic woes, environmental exploitation, the difficulties faced by newly arrived immigrants and refugees—from a uniquely human perspective. This sextet of characters, and the wildly varying dozens who surround them, find in the oil sands a testing ground for both their strengths and weaknesses, and the crucible within which their future selves will be forged.

How did you find and choose the subjects for the film?

I was looking for young people who’d just recently arrived in Fort Mac, full of hopes, dreams and naïveté. I wanted to walk the viewer through their ups and downs in a place where the men seem tough and the women even tougher. I wasn’t looking for tough characters, though: sensitivity and beauty—both inner and physical beauty—were important to me.

We have all been in situations where we feel out of place, and that is the type of person I was drawn to in Fort Mac.

This feeling—that you don’t belong but you must survive and succeed—is what I wanted viewers to see in Max, Sable, KingDeng and Patrick. I was also looking for characters that I could relate to on a personal level, people who had dreams, and not just about personal wealth. When I started to film, I realized that the three people I wanted to film the most were immigrants and refugees who had come to Fort McMurray from a world away, both physically and existentially. These were KingDeng, a former child solider from South Sudan; Max, an Arab from Lebanon; and Mucharata, who left her son, and family, in the Philippines. Being an immigrant myself, I could feel what was at stake for these young people and the challenges they face on a very intimate level.

How I actually found them is another story. I registered on Plenty of Fish, a dating site. Fort Mac in 2012 was a boomtown where almost everyone arrived alone from somewhere else. Plenty of Fish was widely used in Fort McMurray, and not just for dating but as a platform to meet people. And that’s what I did.

So, I came to Fort Mac with a camera in the fall of 2012, already knowing that I would be filming Max. Through him, I met Sable, his co-worker in King’s barber shop. I was fortunate that a professor at Keyano College introduced me to KingDeng, a social work student, a true charmer and a true talent. The church connected me with Andrew, who was the leader of the church youth group. Mucharata was already a local celebrity, and not only because of the craziest nail design I’ve ever seen before, or since. I found her through online research. Patrick just came from Los Angeles to Fort Mac a couple weeks before I found him, and it was too good to be true:  Hollywood, a place that is actually even more of a test for an artist. Patrick’s mom, Cathy, became an integral part of the film too.

There were so many people I started to film, and then, for one reason or another, I wasn’t able to include them in the film… I am forever grateful to all the wonderful people who gave me their time and allowed me into their lives.

 How long did you spend in Fort McMurray making the film?

At first, the NFB producer of the film, Bonnie Thompson, and I came for just five days in July 2012. Bonnie had been there many times, being a film producer from Edmonton, but I had never been in Northern Alberta before.

The city was packed with young people. The energy, the testosterone, the excitement of being young, making money and being free was filling the air of the city. We met with many, many people in town but the wildest thing we did was to go to “camps” where some workers live.

The camps were surreal. We saw people relaxing after their shifts, walking around in their bath robes, after having a shower, as if it was a spa or resort. And then you turn your head, and you see the industry, the enormous construction sites, and the enormous smog looking right back at you. It was unreal and unforgettable.

I wish we could have filmed outside the camps and on the sites, but the companies would not grant us permission to do so. If people could see the epic scale of these facilities and the landscapes—they would still not believe it.

I started filming in September 2012, and most of it was completed in July 2013. I started editing. I went back in March of 2015, after the oil prices dropped and an economic crisis was taking over the industry, and of course, the town.

The town felt almost deserted, compared to how I had seen it in 2012 and 2013. So many people were leaving. There was so much anxiety. I went to all the places I loved—and they’d all changed. Sable and Mucharata were the only two main characters of the film still living and working in Fort McMurray. All the guys had left. I found that symbolic in a strange way.

I found Max, KingDeng and Andrew in Edmonton and Toronto.

How were you received in Fort McMurray? Was there any suspicion that you were there to do some kind of environmental exposé on the oil sands?

I personally didn’t feel any animosity from people in Fort McMurray. I know that there is a history of mistrust between locals and visiting media.

It’s impossible to spend a couple days in town and not simplify the lives and personalities of those who make a choice to capitalize on the oil sands development. And yes, quite often black and white are the only colours that are used in storytelling about the city. In my case, since I am a filmmaker mostly interested in people, the moral complexity excites me.

I think people could tell from what I was filming, and from the questions I was asking, that I didn’t come to judge anyone. I wanted to film the rite of passage of Canadian youth who didn’t have parents who would be able to pay for their first car or whom they could rely on financially.

I actually felt that a lot of people in town helped me and connected me to those I started to film. Even the city council, the mayor’s office, the church, the hair salon, Keyano College—every place helped me.

As for the industry, that’s a different story. That was a brick wall I hit over and over again. There was no filming of anyone allowed, anywhere, period.

Was it difficult to get to know your subjects and have them open up to you on camera?

When I meet people I can usually tell who will be open and comfortable on camera and who will not. I am sure that Sable, Max, KingDeng could easily be actors because they were so natural and open on camera. And Patrick actually is an actor!

When choosing whom you want to film as main characters, for me, it’s like sensing whether you would become friends: there must be an emotional connection on a human level. We cannot just be director and subject. And you do become friends: I am always emotionally attached to people I film, and I do care about them. Plus, I usually do my own shooting, sound and interviews—just one woman running around with a camera, so I don’t come from a position of power. I think this is what makes the people in my films so real; it is a very intimate experience.

The characters express themselves in song quite often in the movie. Was this something you were looking for, or did it just come naturally?

In the film, Max is asked by a South African philosopher-musician, “What brought you here?” Max’s answer in many ways sums up what so many could say about the oil sands: “I ended up here, somehow.”

Fort McMurray was a place where so many young aspiring artists, especially musicians, used to go in the hopes of making enough money within a year or two to give them the means of jump-starting their music career.

Music and “being young” go hand-in-hand. Fort Mac was a capital for daring talent in many ways: you are constantly shocked by this person or that person not just being able to sing but singing truly well, like KingDeng, Lilly or Mucharata! There was no way to include all the talent that was there at the time—outstanding musicians in coveralls singing at open-mic nights, an aboriginal rapper who rapped with KingDeng about his sister and rez life; the exotic singer Danny, Sean Semper-Whyte—the creator of Fort McMurray anthem “Heavy Haulers”—and the great poet and rapper Brian Walrond. I would have loved to show them all, to give the mic to each of those artists who “ended up in Fort McMurray somehow.” But the length of the film required sacrifices.

Was there any difficulty in striking a balance between serving your story and serving the characters? That is, were there any moments where you thought, “They won’t like this one bit, but I’m putting it in anyway.”

When I edit, I am filtering what I put in the story through the eyes of people I film. Is this or that phrase, this or that action, authentic for that person, or was it a moment, a mood, a phrase that wasn’t? I don’t put such things in for the sake of spicing up the story. But I do ask myself when I am editing if one sensitive thing or another is important to be revealed because this is the foundation on which the personality of that person is built. There are instances when a person, Max for example, doesn’t see things in a certain way, but these are the vital reasons why his life took the path it did. I get to know people I film very well, and sometimes I understand more than what they understand about themselves. I edit according to how I understand them, not to how they want to be seen, but I cut things out if they might harm a person’s life.

What was it like for you to watch the news and see the wildfire begin to engulf Fort McMurray?

Two days before the wildfire turned into an out-of-control beast, my dear friends who live not far from the airport were ordered to evacuate. After that, I felt a lot of anxiety for all the people I got to know in Fort Mac. At 3:23 p.m. on May 3, I got a message on Facebook from Patrick Hampton, the Hollywood scriptwriter-to-be. He wrote, “Doesn’t look good. The whole city is under evacuation.” I immediately tuned into Global TV Edmonton’s live coverage. The very first thing I saw was a journalist reporting from a spot I could easily recognize: the downtown side of Highway 63. Within minutes, while he was reporting, gigantic flames erupted behind him on the other side of the road, with unbelievable speed and ferocity. I was stunned and terrified thinking that the fire would jump into the downtown area right at that moment… After that, everything I saw was more and more unimaginably unreal. I was seeing places I knew so well go up in flames, like a Super 8 Motel near the gas station, and then the cars, numerous cars, fleeing. I started to text people I had filmed who still were living in Fort Mac, asking how they were doing, where they were, were they safe, were their children with them, were their partners at work onsite or fleeing with them. And, of course, being a filmmaker I asked them to film anything they could on their phones if they got a chance. But that was really secondary to the overwhelming feeling of worrying about people you know.

I have kept my recording of Global TV’s live coverage of these several hours of the afternoon of May 3, 2016, and I am sure a day will come when I’ll watch it again, because I don’t think the memories of that day will go anywhere anytime soon.

You initially finished this film in April of 2016. When did you know you had to include this event in the film?

We finished the film basically a week before the fire. The moment I saw the flames, the cars fleeing, it became clear that the Fort McMurray saga Limit Is the Sky was not over. The fire had to be in the film because, in the big scheme of life, it was not an accidental fire. And I believe that’s why so many people decided to leave the town now, several months after the fire. The fire is the logical outcome of the story of these wonderful people in the film, but it’s also a warning to all of us, not just people in the oil sands.

Are Mucharata and Sable, two of the subjects who remained in Fort McMurray, still there?

Sable left Fort McMurray many months before the fire; it was only Mucharata and Andrew, the religious young man whose story is featured in the film, who were there when the fire surrounded Fort McMurray. Both Mucharata and Andrew are back in Fort Mac but of course their lives are very different: Mucharata’s house was not damaged by the fire, and after she came back she returned to work in the oil sands pretty much right away, and that’s all, not much to add. Andrew stayed in Fort McMurray during the fire, after everyone was evacuated, because he was feeding the firefighters through the Salvation Army initiative. He stayed way longer than what was safe. He had to take time to recover after the fire and now he is back in town, helping others to cope with the emotional aftermath of what seems to be the worst natural disaster in the history of our country. His story was not filmed, because first he was away recovering, then he was too busy helping people in real life, but I think most importantly he felt it was the time to let the film go out into the world and stop filming. That’s what I think about the film as well. It starts when Fort McMurray is at its peak, then it takes us through the crisis and economic downfall, it drags us through the flames with people fleeing, and finally, it leaves us flying above the open mine, with the sunset reflected in the tailing pond.