Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor/Great-Grandparent/Great-Grandchild] Spectrum

In Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor/Great-Grandparent/Great-Grandchild], Ojibway filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil turn their attention to the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA), whose members work to bring the human remains and funerary objects of Indigenous Ancestors home from museums, universities, and archives. Through conversations with repatriation specialists, elders, historians, and museum workers, the film follows a process that moves through law, bureaucracy, ceremony, and grief, while confronting the history of colonial violence that placed these remains in institutional collections to begin with.

The documentary’s gaze is guided by a duty of care. The Khalils refuse the detached way museums have allowed the dead to be displayed, and question how Ancestors can be represented without repeating this violence. Past, present, and future begin to fold into one another as preservation becomes inseparable from repair and responsibility. Winner of Sundance’s NEXT Audience Award, Aanikoobijigan is a work of restitution and formal courage, honouring the dignity of the dead and the living communities who remember them.

Content Considerations: Colonial violence, institutional racism, settler-colonialism, residential schools, intense flashing and stroboscopic light

Audience Award: NEXT, Sundance 2026