The Film Verdict: Your film deals with a very delicate subject. How aware were you of the Inuit rights debate before you started working on this project?
Lin Alluna: I knew nothing about it before my first encounter with Aaju Peter, who inspired me to make the film. Growing up as a white person in Denmark, I was unfamiliar with our history of colonialism, which tends to be downplayed.
TFV: Last year saw the premiere of Godland, which deals with Denmark’s complicated relationship with Iceland. Is Denmark having a moment of clarity regarding its past?
LA: Maybe not quite an actual moment of clarity, but we’re getting there.
TFV: What’s it like having the premiere in the United States, which also have their complicated history with native peoples?
LA: That’s a very interesting aspect because this concerns multiple countries around the world, hence the initiative for the International Forum of Indigenous People. In fact, the original plan was to also travel to New Zealand, for example. Then the pandemic happened, so we limited ourselves to Canada and Greenland, where Aaju has been the most active.
TFV: Perhaps you could do those additional trips in a follow-up film.
LA: I’ve actually joked with Aaju that after Twice Colonized we should make a sequel and call it Twice Decolonized [laughs].
TFV: There’s a moment, early in the film, where Aaju refers to you as her colonizer. How often did that happen during the shoot?
LA: A lot. She also called me her stalker [laughs]. It was important for me to show all facets of Aaju’s life: she’s an activist and advocate for Inuit rights, but she also has a domestic life, a family, and she has a good sense of humor.
TFV: She also says that sometimes when she meets people, they’re surprised because she doesn’t match the image they have of Inuit people. Did you have any misconceptions that the filming experience eliminated?
LA: I wouldn’t know how to answer that. However, I did learn a very valuable lesson through all this time I spent with Aaju, which is how to communicate with silence. That was quite special, to be able to properly communicate without having to resort to spoken language.
TFV: You spent a long time shooting the film. Because you aim to capture the complexities of the Inuit question, as well as Aaju’s personal story, how hard was it to strike the right balance in the edit?
LA: We cut a lot of material that I liked. In fact, I could make a whole other movie with that footage.
TFV: The music does a good job of conveying the topicality of the Inuit rights debate, and at the same time the longevity of the culture. Was that your aim?
LA: I’m thrilled if you got that out of it! My goal was to move away from a traditional film score – Johann Johansson was working on it at one point – because I wanted the soundtrack to be an accurate reflection of Inuit society, like the rest of the film.
