US premiere of Christopher Auchter’s NFB documentary The Stand at Missoula’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Presented in the festival’s Best Feature Competition.
PRESS RELEASE
30/01/2025
January 30, 2025 – Vancouver – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter’s National Film Board of Canada (NFB) feature documentary The Stand will have its US premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which takes place February 14 to 23 in Missoula, Montana.
Award-winning director Christopher Auchter will be there in person at the festival, which has programmed The Stand as its centrepiece film on Monday, February 17—one of its featured prime-time slots.
The Stand has been selected as one of 10 finalists in the Best Feature Competition at Big Sky, which is the largest documentary film festival in the American West.
About the film
The Stand by Christopher Auchter (94 min 33 s)
Produced by Shirley Vercruysse for the NFB’s Western Documentary Unit in Vancouver
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/the-stand
- On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. Drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage and audio, The Stand recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation’s resolute act of vision and conscience changed the world.
- Winner of the Audience Award/Northern Lights program and a Special Mention/Arbutus Award at the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Select reviews for The Stand
- “A riveting new feature documentary… Christopher Auchter, director of the award-winning documentary Now Is the Time, recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation took a stand.”
- Jane Williams, Redeye, CFRO Radio
- “Impressive NFB doc… the images may be decades old, but this stand is timeless.”
- “Four stars… A remarkable testament to the power of love applied to NVC (nonviolent communication) in the context of an Indigenous Nation in my home province of BC defending their traditional territory from indiscriminate old growth logging in the mid-eighties.”
- Glen Grunau, Nanaimo International Film Screening Society, Letterboxd
About the director
- Now based in Burnaby, BC, Christopher Auchter (Waats’daa) grew up roaming the beaches and forests of the Haida Gwaii archipelago off Canada’s West Coast, and his art is rooted in the land and stories of the Haida people.
- His previous projects include Now Is the Time (2019), a multi-award-winning look back at the first new totem pole raising on Haida Gwaii in almost a century, now featured at Op-Docs, the New York Times’ award-winning series of short documentaries.
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French version here | Version française ici.
Media Relations
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About the NFB
Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of distinctive, engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 6,500 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 11 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.