A mother joins a group of vigilantes to help free her daughter from a state-run academy in this feature from Danis Goulet.
“Night Raiders” imagines a dystopian world where Indigenous people have been displaced from their land and ghettoized in reserves, while their children are forcibly enrolled in residential schools that brainwash them into forgetting their language and culture. That these are aspects of the actual history of Indigenous communities in North America, and not merely futuristic fictions, is the ingenious and damning conceit of Danis Goulet’s debut feature.
“Night Raiders” follows Niska (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers), who’s managed to keep her 11-year-old daughter, Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), close to her by living hidden in the woods. When a series of accidents forces them into the city — a squalid slum where packets of food are airdropped to impoverished residents — Niska is forced to give up an injured Waseese to the state. But soon, a torn-up Niska stumbles upon a Cree vigilante community that’s been waiting for a prophesied “guardian” to arrive and help free their children.
Goulet’s sleek, lo-fi world-building — decrepit gray cityscapes; fields covered with smoke-spewing factories — is more compelling than her storytelling, which grows increasingly predictable as Niska and the vigilantes plan a raid on Waseese’s academy. Yet the film’s use of clichés can also be thrillingly subversive at times, reminding us of the ways in which genre-movie templates borrow from the history of colonization but obscure the plight of its real victims. A final showdown between the Cree fighters and SWAT-style soldiers recalls westerns, though the stakes are reversed here: The colonizers are not the heroes, but the bad guys.
Night Raiders
Not rated. In Cree and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
