Movies Similar to Button Blanket

LaDonna Harris: Indian 101(2014)

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

Documentário Brasil Tupinambá(2021)

Amazônia, a Nova Minamata?(2022)

Our People Will Be Healed(2017)

Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.

Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy(2021)

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.

Colebrook: A Place of Healing & Learning(2022)

Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park is where the Colebrook Training Home once stood. It is now a permanent memorial for the Aboriginal children of the “Stolen Generation” and their families.

The Paradox of Norval Morrisseau(1974)

In this revealing study of Norval Morrisseau, filmed as he works among the lakes and woodlands of his ancestors, we see a remarkable Indigenous artist who emerged from a life of obscurity in the North American bush to become one of Canada's most renowned painters. Morrisseau the man is much like his paintings: vital and passionate, torn between his Ojibway heritage and the influences of the white man's world.

The Colours of Pride(1973)

Tom Hill, a Seneca artist and curator, explores the works of four contemporary Indigenous artists.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film(2017)

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

The Lost Children(2024)

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

Nowhere Land(2015)

Documentary about filmmaker Bonnie Ammaaq's memories of life on Baffin Island, where her family moved for eleven years during her childhood from the hamlet of Igloolik to return to the traditional Inuit way of life.

Tawai: A Voice from the Forest(2017)

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

Deep Roots(2020)

Lonnie Kauk’s personal journey to honor his indigenous Yosemite roots, and to connect with his legendary father by repeating his iconic climbs.

Wood Mountain Poems(1978)

In this short documentary, Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski introduces us to Wood Mountain, the south central Saskatchewan village he calls home. In between musings on his poetry, which is tinged with nostalgia and the vast loneliness of the plains, the poet discusses the area’s multicultural background and Native heritage, as well as the customs and stories of these various ethnic groups.

Nose and Tina(1980)

The unusual story of Nose and Tina, 2 people in love. He is employed as a brakeman, she as a sex worker.

The Pearl Button(2015)

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

Wandering Spirit Survival School(1978)

Wandering Spirit School, organized by concerned parents, broke with tradition by introducing subjects that are of particular relevance to its pupils. Traditional Indigenous stories, traditions, languages and crafts balance the program of academic subjects required by the Ontario Ministry of Education. The experience of the children at Wandering Spirit is contrasted with the very different life experienced by their parents, educated in the old residential schools.

Seven Songs from the Tundra(2000)

An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power.

Monica in the South Seas(2023)

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

Northlore(2025)

Weaving animation and live action, Northlore delves into the transformational stories of people living in Canada’s North and their deep connection to the land and its wildlife.