Wilfred Buck – Hot Docs 2024
Danny Elfman Teaches Music for Film
April 25 to May 5, 2024
Content Advisory: Needles or drug addiction
FILM FESTIVAL
Hot Docs
Hot Docs 2024
PROGRAMME
Canadian Spectrum Competition
AWARDS
Top 20 Audience Favourite
A Cree survivor of colonial trauma finds solace in his passion for the stars in Wilfred Buck. Wilfred Buck had a traumatic upbringing, with his siblings being victims of the Sixties Scoop and his mother dying on the streets of Winnipeg. Today, Wilfred Buck is an astronomer and educator passionate about the stars.
Wilfred Buck Synopsis
Wilfred Buck is a biographical documentary about the Cree astronomer directed by Lisa Jackson. The film alternates between present-day footage of the elder Wilfred Buck and dramatized reenactments featuring narration from his autobiography I Have Lived Four Lives. At the core of the present-day story is preparations for the four-day Sundance ceremony.
My Thoughts on Wilfred Buck
Early on in Wilfred Buck, the narrator playing Buck’s younger self describes his story as his “reality fiction.” That is an apt description for this film, which is a hybrid of present-day documentary and dramatization. Admittedly, I had difficulty tying in the dramatizations about Wilfred Buck’s traumatic upbring to his modern life as an astronomer, other than he is perhaps better off today than he was in his youth.
