Mi’kmaw filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, considered a visionary of modern indigenous cinema, has died.
The director’s reps say he died after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 46 years old.
Raised on Quebec’s Listuguj Reserve, Barnaby directed many short films, including the Jutra Award-nominated The Colony and the Genie-nominated File Under Miscellaneous.
The writer-director, who continued to reside in Montreal for much of his career, won praise for his first feature Rhymes for Young Ghouls in 2013. The film criticized Canada’s residential school system in a way not widely seen in cinema before. Set in the 1970s, it also reminded audiences that the events it depicted were not ancient history.
Barnaby followed up Ghouls with the 2019 zombie horror film Blood Quantum, which swept the Canadian Screen Awards, winning six of 10 nominations, the most of any film at the awards that year. It featured a cast that was almost all Indigenous and Barnaby spent over 13 years from conception to debut.
From left, Forrest Goodluck, Michael Greyeyes and Kiowa Gordon appear in a scene from Jeff Barnaby’s film Blood Quantum. (Elevation images)
“In qualified and political terms, it’s 100 percent a native zombie exploitation film,” Barnaby said in a 2020 interview with CBC.
Blood Quantum depicted a zombie outbreak on a fictional Mi’kmaq reservation. Although it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, its theatrical release was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and instead premiered on streaming services on 2020
“People keep calling it an urgent film with all the things going on now because of the virus,” Barnaby said of the film, which paralleled the ongoing pandemic. “Meanwhile, the natives have put up with it forever.”
Friends share grief, praise
Friends and contemporaries shared his grief shortly after his death became known.
“Beautifully stubborn to the end, Jeff Barnaby was bold in his life and in his work. He had a sensitivity, poignancy and depth about him that translated through his films and resonated with indigenous and non-native audiences alike,” friend and friend. Actor Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs was quoted in a press release.
Jacobs, who currently stars in the Taika Waititi-created series Reservation Dogs and will appear in the upcoming Marvel series Echo, starred in Rhymes for Young Ghouls.
At the launch, he went on to say that he “wouldn’t be an actor today” without the influence of Barnaby, whose films “resonated with Indigenous and non-Native audiences”.
We should have had a lot more Jeff Barnaby movies. Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Blood Quantum and his short films showed an artist driven by a burning fire. He understood horror at its deepest levels. Such a shock. REST IN PEACE. pic.twitter.com/qgILv4aieq
—@cameron_tiff
On Twitter, Toronto International Film Festival CEO Cameron Bailey described Barnaby as an “artist driven by a burning fire,” who “understood horror at its deepest levels.”
“Canadian cinema was better for having his talents, passion and vision,” actor and writer Jay Baruchel said in his own post.
And fellow Canadian writer-director Jason Eisener shared that Barnaby “was incredibly talented with a strong, inspiring voice.”
Barnaby is survived by his wife, Sarah Del Seronde, and son, Miles.