Zacharias Kunuk is making Inuit stories for the future with TIFF-winning ‘Wrong Husband’

Haiden Angutimarik as Sapa (left) and Theresia Kappianaq as Kaujak (left) star in Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), directed by Zacharias Kunuk. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Kingulliit Productions (Mandatory credit)

Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk says his new fantasy feature is as much about the future as it is about a 4,000-year-old tale.

“We’re thinking a hundred years from now, when we’re down in the ground, people will study these films,” says the 68-year-old.

“So we have to try to do it right.”

Set in 2000 BCE in Igloolik, Nunavut, “Uiksaringitara” (“Wrong Husband”) opens with two young lovers, Kaujak and Sapa — played by Theresia Kappianaq and Haiden Angutimarik — who were pledged to each other at birth. Their bond is tested when Kaujak’s mother remarries after her husband’s death, sending her to a different camp. Guided by spirit helpers — and stalked by a lumbering, child-thieving troll — they set out on separate paths in hopes of reuniting.

The film, which won the Best Canadian Feature Film Award at TIFF this year, is currently on a nationwide theatrical run.

Kunuk recalls that in the mid-1960s, he met a man in Igloolik who, much like the story in the film, had married a woman promised to another. They built a life together and had two children, until one day the woman’s original fiancé returned.

“They duked it out… And he lost. The right husband took his woman away,” he says during a call from his home in Igloolik.

That real-life story was the seed of “Wrong Husband,” reflecting a part of Inuit culture that had largely been lost after Christianity arrived in the Arctic, when missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries actively discouraged many traditional practices.

“When I was growing up, I knew about arranged marriage. I heard about it. I knew people still lived it. By the time we were being bulldozed by Christianity, we were starting to let go of Inuit culture because we all wanted to go to heaven,” says Kunuk.

“This is our culture. It’s been forgotten so much. But this culture fascinates me. It brought me here today.”

Though “Wrong Husband” is set centuries ago, Kunuk says the time period is more of a best guess.

“The beauty of this culture is that time stood still. The clothes were the same, the animals were the same, the way they butchered them was the same,” he explains.

“We couldn’t really tell if it was 4,000 years ago or 500 years ago, so we just put a number.”

Kunuk first captured worldwide attention with 2001’s “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” an epic retelling of an Inuit legend about a warrior’s fight against an evil spirit sowing discord in a community. It’s widely considered to be one of the best Canadian films of all time.

The director says his goal with each project is simple: to rewrite history from an Inuit perspective, preserving what he can along the way.

“When we act our culture, we want to portray it perfectly. We want the costumes to be right, the language to be right, the dialect to be right,” says Kunuk.

“I work with elders right from the start in developing the story. I make sure the scenes I’m going to do are the right thing to do. If the elders don’t like it, I won’t do it.”

“When we’re in production, we’re learning about our culture,” he adds.

That approach extends to supernatural figures in the film, including trolls, shamans and helping spirits.

“When we were children living on the land, our parents would tell us, ‘Don’t wander too far or the troll will get you.’ These are things we grew up with and I wanted to put that in the film,” he says.

Kunuk says he also wanted “Wrong Husband” to act as a training ground for a new generation of northern actors. Kunuk and longtime collaborator, actor Natar Ungalaaq, recruited untrained high school students in Igloolik.

“The students were very interested in portraying their own culture. When it comes from the culture, that’s as close as it gets,” he says.

Kunuk is already deep into his next project, an eight-part APTN docu-series charting Inuit history from pre-contact to the present day. The series tracks the arrival of whalers, traders, missionaries and, eventually, climate change, which Kunuk says is reshaping life in the Arctic.

“When I came to Igloolik in 1966, the ocean froze in early October. This year it froze in late November. We have to adapt our spring hunting routes because the ice is too thin,” he says.

“But the Inuit have faced and lived through many things.”

Kunuk says he already has ideas for a future feature — a shapeshifter story rooted in Inuit mythology.

“I might do it,” he says with a smile.

“I just have to do my research. Back to school.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2025.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press