Theresia Kappianaq as Kajuk, left, and her mother Nujatut (Leah Panimera) in Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), directed by Zacharias Kunuk. The film will have its North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.Kingulliit Productions/TIFF
The bonds of family and the inextricable commitments of community another are themes that loom large in Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), the latest Arctic epic from Canadian filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, which will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next week.
Starting with the arranged marriage between “future husband” (Haiden Angutimarik) and “future wife” (Theresia Kappianaq) 4,000 years ago, Kunuk’s new film blends hard-eyed drama with beguiling fantasy, the story laced with the promises that one generation makes to the next.
Which feels only appropriate, given that the production marks a new chapter in Kunuk’s long and fruitful multigenerational relationship with the Cohn-Cousineau family of Montreal.
TIFF 2025: The 15 buzziest movies you can’t miss at this year’s Toronto film festival
Back in 1985, New York-born filmmaker and producer Norman Cohn, who spent much of his 20s in the Maritimes, travelled to Iqaluit to help train employees of the Inuit Broadcasting Corp., including a young Kunuk. After the two clicked, Cohn followed Kunuk home to Igloolik (in what is now Nunavut), sometimes sleeping on Kunuk’s couch. Eventually, the two founded Isuma Productions.
The outfit developed a signature cinematic style that focused on “relived” cultural drama, meshing the oral tradition of Inuit storytelling with the authenticity of contemporary social activist digital filmmaking (Kunuk would have the first video camera in the Arctic).
“When I first met Norman, I didn’t really understand the whole mechanics of the film industry – financing, arts councils, the system – which he had a better understanding of,” Kunuk recalls today. “We developed things project to project. Maybe the most important thing I learned from Norman: Don’t take no for an answer. And never lose a receipt!”
In 1990, Cohn’s partner, Quebecois video artist Marie-Hélène Cousineau, arrived in Igloolik, the couple going back and forth from the Arctic to their second home in Montreal.
Over the next several decades, Isuma would revolutionize Canadian culture. From the 2001 drama Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes and six Genie Awards including best picture, to the 2012 launch of the Digital Indigenous Democracy initiative, which offered a new-media framework for community engagement, the production company developed a reputation as a creative and innovative force to be reckoned with.
And now, with Wrong Husband, one generation of the Cohn-Cousineau family is taking over from the other, with Norman and Marie-Hélène’s son Samuel Cohn-Cousineau enjoying his first feature-length credit as a producer on the film (as well as co-writing it with Kunuk).
“I grew up in that environment. It was a second home to me,” says Cohn-Cousineau. “I always went to school in Montreal, but we would spend our summers in Igoolik, which as a kid – you know, 24-hour sunlight – that’s super freeing. You play all day and all night, just spending time on the land. And I was always around the work of my parents, but that’s what it’s just like on film sets there. Maybe 20 or 30 other kids were on set hanging out while filming was going on. I feel so privileged to have been so welcomed into the community.”
A still from Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband).Kingulliit Productions/TIFF
As he grew older, Cohn-Cousineau would not only better clock the differences between his life in the south and his life in the North – “You really notice the differences in resources, in the colonial, structural barriers even for basic services and infrastructure” – but a different method of creative collaboration.
“The approach in Igloolik is much more horizontal. It’s not a top-down type of filmmaking,” says the producer, who first got professionally involved with Isuma on the distribution side, before transitioning to production.
“Obviously there are roles and people have experience and knowledge that is respected and takes precedence, but people are also involved in every aspect of the process. Actors bring their own experiences, the scripts are rewritten many times with elders’ input. It’s an aspect of constant recreation.”
Yet every filmmaking team needs someone at the centre to inspire creativity, and the commitment to follow that artistic vision through – traits that Kunuk feels have, in this case, been passed down from father to son.
“I think he learned a lot from his father – what he brings to the team is enthusiasm, the drive to have confidence,” says the filmmaker, who will receive a TIFF Tribute Award this weekend in Toronto. “I remember Sam back when he was six years old, hanging around the film set – he was actually named after my brother. Even today, I call him brother.”
TIFF 2025: Steal Away’s Clement Virgo leaves Scarborough for a more fantastical world
Cohn-Cousineau’s close and decades-long proximity to Kunuk has also allowed the producer to watch the filmmaker evolve creatively.
“He’s always coming up with another story – he’s an extremely visual thinker,” says Cohn-Cousineau. “A lot of the spiritual concepts in Wrong Husband, and the documentation of a historical period that hasn’t been shown much in film, is so important to him. There’s a sense of urgency on his part to document, to record these stories.”
Today, Cohn-Cousineau spends most of his time in Montreal, where he is studying for a master’s degree. But he visits Igloolik as often as he can, including to attend a community screening earlier this year for Wrong Husband ahead of its world premiere at the Berlinale film festival.
He sees only expansion and growth for Isuma, and the region as a whole.
“There’s a lot of talent in Igloolik, and people there are really artistically minded,” says Cohn-Cousineau, who is currently developing a documentary series with Kunuk about the history of religion.
“There’s enormous potential for more films with younger directors, younger actors. We have colleagues who have started a national television broadcaster, too, Uvagut TV. There are so many cultural opportunities.”
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) screens at TIFF on Sept. 8, 9 and 14 (tiff.net).
