Dreamspeakers Festival wraps successful run in downtown Edmonton

By Troy Dumont, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

(ANNews) – This year’s Dreamspeakers Festival brought screenings, workshops, teachings, and community gatherings to several downtown spaces, including Landmark Cinemas at Edmonton City Centre, Kakio Studio Café, Co*Lab Performance Hall, and Amiskwaciw Waskayhkan Ihtawin, also known as Beaver Hills House Park.

For Jessica Daniels, acting executive director of Dreamspeakers, the move downtown was about visibility. “One of our goals is to see Indigenous art, Indigenous people reflected in the landscape and to be reflected in the spaces that we occupy,” she said. Dreamspeakers is still gathering formal feedback, but the response Daniels heard during and after the event was positive, some audience members told her it was the strongest festival in many years, and attendance was the highest it’s been in a long time.

The festival opened with ceremonies and a community dialogue connected to the Walk of Honour at Beaver Hills House Park before continuing with several days of film screenings, workshops, market programming and outdoor events. Daniels said the Walk of Honour was an important moment because it showcased parts of downtown Edmonton that many people still do not know exist, adding that part of the festival’s purpose was to bring more attention to those spaces.

While planning programming for Beaver Hills House, Daniels noticed many young Indigenous people already spending time in the park, but she also saw the challenges that came with it. “I thought, okay, well, obviously we’re in the right space,” she said. “Yes, difficulties. But yes, we need to be there.”

For those who frequent downtown Edmonton, the frustrations of construction, road closures and difficult parking are all too familiar and for festival goers attending Dreamspeakers, this year was no exception. Daniels said parking and downtown access created challenges for both festival organizers and attendees. Edmonton City Centre was one of the festival’s main locations, but she said the parkade system was confusing and some members of the Dreamspeakers team received $100 parking tickets, even after paying for daily parking. Road closures near Kakio Studio Café also made access difficult for drivers. Daniels said when Dreamspeakers first began working with the venue, the street was not closed, but by the time the festival took place, traffic access had changed. Still, Daniels said downtown was chosen partly because it can be easier to reach for people who rely on transit, and because some community members may not feel as comfortable travelling to other parts of the city for festival programming.

Dreamspeakers has always been about more than Canadian Indigenous stories. As an international festival, it brings together filmmakers from across the world whose cultures, languages and histories may be vastly different, but whose work keeps returning to the same threads.

“I think that being an international film festival is an important aspect of who we are,” Daniels said.

The festival uses a wide understanding of Indigeneity, encompassing peoples who have experienced colonization in their own territories and, in many cases, displacement or marginalization on their own lands. Those definitions can be imperfect, Daniels acknowledged, but the festival creates space to see how Indigenous peoples across the world understand land, identity and survival.

Films such as Songs of Kamui, which focuses on the Ainu experience in Japan, show how those connections cross borders. Stories from different communities often return to the same themes: land stewardship, cultural identity, colonialism, violence against women, and resurgence.

“There’s something important that happens when we see that we’re not alone in this,” Daniels said.

The festival does feature international stories, but Daniels said the focus remains on local and Canadian Indigenous filmmakers. Dreamspeakers accepts submissions through FilmFreeway, the same platform used by festivals around the world. The festival wants to reach both established artists and emerging filmmakers who might not yet believe their work is ready to be seen.

Looking ahead, Dreamspeakers wants to keep growing as a home for Indigenous film and media arts. Already a Canadian Screen Award qualifying festival, the organization hopes to one day become Oscar-qualifying, while bringing more local Indigenous filmmakers into the fold and creating stronger red-carpet moments and more opportunities for young people to tell stories using both new and older technologies.

But the festival’s purpose reaches beyond film alone. It is about community, cultural recovery and giving Indigenous people space to imagine different futures.

“Engaging with Indigenous stories through film, through television, through theatre, through ceremony, they’re medicine for our brain,” Daniels said. “They help us to think better, to think bigger.”