Startling but messy anti-pipeline documentary Yintah suffers from too much fire, not enough fuel

• Yintah
• Directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano
• Classification N/A; 125 minutes
• Opens at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto July 12; expands to other Canadian cities throughout summer

Assembled with a passion so fiery that the film threatens to self-combust halfway through, the new Canadian documentary Yintah delivers a commanding and seductive portrait of resistance. Yet the volume of the film’s message is also cranked up to such an intense degree that the quieter, messier facts of its story are unnecessarily muted, resulting in a doc that only feels half-realized.

Borrowing its name from the Wet’suwet’en word for “land,” Yintah attempts to compress a decade’s worth of fraught history and politics – really, several centuries – into a tight two hours. Using the fight between the Wet’suwet’en people of northern British Columbia and TC Energy over the Coastal GasLink pipeline as a means to excoriate Canada’s historical approach to Indigenous sovereignty, directors Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano have created an epic in miniature. But they have also left out a number of key voices that could have contributed essential context, a tactic that ends up muddying what is intended to be a crystal-clear rallying cry.

Undoubtedly, the directors knew they had star subjects in Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, two Wet’suwet’en activists of different generations who have sacrificed blood, sweat and tears in their struggles against oil executives, RCMP officers and politicians.

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And by closely embedding themselves inside one Wet’suwet’en community over such a long period of time – during which we see hair grow grey and families expand – Yintah’s filmmakers subtly mirror their own commitment with that of their onscreen heroes. The sheer depth and breadth of the activism on display resonates on a profoundly human level, which is partly why the film nabbed the top audience prize at this year’s Hot Docs Festival. This is a movie that knows how to pierce a heart and stir a soul.

Yet there is a fuzzier approach to the situation on the ground. Simply put, Yintah too breezily waves away history and complexity in favour of black-and-white fury. The Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark Delgamuukw ruling in 1997, which established that the Wet’suwet’en had systems of law that predated the days of elected band councils enacted under the Indian Act, is given a cursory round-down. But there is no serious explanation of the bitter legacy of that case. Nor is there any voice given to the 20 First Nations band councils that did sign agreements with TC for the Coastal GasLink pipeline, including five of the six band councils in the Wet’suwet’en nation.

The Wet’suwet’en struggle is also presented as a unified front, especially during the film’s third act, which focuses on the CN Rail blockades that anti-CGL activists staged in early 2020. Yet there has been significant division within the Wet’suwet’en Nation over the pipeline – news that will come as a sharp surprise to some of Yintah’s audiences.

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Perhaps it was decided that including such perspectives in the doc would have blunted its galvanizing call-to-arms power. But the pronounced absence of even outer-edge background only serves to nag audience curiosity, inviting skepticism at best and cynicism at worst.

Certainly no documentarian is obliged to include every single viewpoint on an issue. But the many contextual holes here – which could have been filled by simply, say, having an elected First Nation chief with one of the chronically underfunded B.C. band councils explain exactly why they made the choice to sign with TC – add up to a disappointingly insincere account.

And it is not as if the rest of Yintah would have suffered as a result of such inclusion. When you have blood-boiling footage of police officers chainsawing a piece of plyboard with the word “reconciliation” on it, or RCMP snipers lining up to target unarmed protesters, or a smiling Justin Trudeau dismissively shutting down questions at a town hall, then you already have the opposition dead to rights. Why invite criticism, then, that can be gleaned from the quickest of post-screening Googling? The only plausible answer is that its filmmakers don’t quite trust their audience.

Ultimately, Yintah wants to leave you with the sourest of tastes in your mouth. Mission accomplished, in a way.