Nicholas previews Palestine documentary

The public recently got a chance to preview Kanehsata’kehró:non Clifton Ariwakehte Nicholas’s new documentary A Red Road to Palestine at La Sala Rossa in Montreal, at an intimate screening that Nicholas said gave him confidence in his work.

“We were thrilled,” said Nicholas, who shared a 17-minute preview of his film, which he aims to have completed in the fall. “It was very well received.”

Nicholas has been working on A Red Road to Palestine since 2016, originally setting out to make a documentary that would “paint the human faces of Palestine.”

Back then he had visited Palestine to witness first-hand the realities of the occupation.

The film went in a new direction, Nicholas said, in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, after an incursion by armed Palestinian group Hamas saw 1,200 Israelis killed and 240 taken hostage.

Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattacks - last October, Palestinian health authorities said more than 67,000 people had been killed in the Gaza strip, with almost one third of those killed under the age of 18.

Conflict in the region dates back far beyond 2023, extending more than 100 years to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which saw the British government commit to establishing Palestine as a national home for Jewish people.

That commitment signified the start of a military operation that killed and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, including in the notable 1948 Nakba, where 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 forced out of their homes.

Nearly 80 percent of historic Palestine was designated as Israel, with the remaining land divided into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which are still occupied by Israel.

Nicholas has been passionate about Palestinian liberation for many years, in part because of the similarities he sees between the struggle of Palestinians and the struggle of Onkwehón:we on Turtle Island.

“All their problems, like all of our problems, come from the same root of European colonization,” Nicholas said. “We’re in the middle of a very tumultuous period in our history, where we’ve seriously got to look at this idea of nationalism, the idea of borders, the idea of who’s legal and who’s not; we have to ask ourselves, where does this notion come from?”

The documentary pieces together archival footage of Palestine with archival footage from the Siege of Kanehsatake in 1990, drawing connections and comparisons between two groups fighting for their sovereignty.

It also features first-person interviews with people who were there in 1990, as well as with those living in occupied Palestine.

“What I experienced over there was this old way of being that I recognize from my grandparents. That kind of hospitality, where you’re invited to eat and sit down,” he said. “Once Palestinians discovered I was Indigenous, they opened their arms wide, they embraced me as one of their own.”

A Red Road to Palestine is being produced by Amplifier Films, led by filmmaker Franklin López, who also collaborated with Nicholas on the documentary. The two are continuing to fundraise for post-production of the film.

Once the film is released later this year, Nicholas’ priority is to make it available as an educational resource, rather than to make a profit.

“The conversation is on everybody’s lips. It’s a conversation that’s impossible to ignore, because we really have to ask ourselves, how did we get here?” he said.

“I’d like to see other Indigenous filmmakers take up the mantle and talk about their stories too.”

More details about the film and how to support its production can be found at amplifierfilms.ca/redroad.

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