Best Film at the Canadian Screen Awards
In Quebec Theatres July 2
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television awarded Anne-Marie Gélinas the Best Picture Award for this film at the last Canadian Screen Awards gala, where it also received finalist spots in the Best Picture (Marie Davignon), Best Actor Casting (Maxime Giroux), Best Sound Mixing (Stephane Bergeron, Yann Cleary) and Tracey Deer for the John Dunning Award for Best First Feature Film.
Shot in Kahnawà:ke, Kanesatake, Oka and Montreal, Beans is the first narrative film to depict the historic Oka crisis in Quebec in 1990 from the perspective of a 12-year-old Mohawk girl.
Twelve-year-old Beans is on the edge: torn between innocent childhood and delinquent adolescence; forced to grow up fast to become the tough Mohawk warrior she’s supposed to be. The film is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during the Oka Crisis, which tore Quebec apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.
“This project goes back a long way for me. I was Beans. I was 12 years old when I lived through an armed stand-off between my people and the Quebec and Canadian governments known as The Oka Crisis. The Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake and Kahnawà:ke stood up to a formidable bully – and won. That summer I knew I wanted to become a filmmaker and vowed to one day tell this story”, declared the filmmaker.
Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer led the acclaimed dramedy MOHAWK GIRLS to five award-winning seasons as its co-creator, director, and co-showrunner. She received four consecutive Canadian Screen Award nominations for Best Direction in a Comedy Series for MOHAWK GIRLS, and she has been honoured at TIFF with the Birks Diamond Tribute Award. She recently returned from Los Angeles, where she was a writing co-EP on the Netflix/CBC series Anne with an E. She’s currently working on INNER CITY GIRL, a feature about Aboriginal gang life, with Original Pictures. Tracey’s work has been honoured with two Gemini Awards and numerous awards from multiple film festivals, including Hot Docs.
Beans is produced by Anne-Marie Gélinas for EMA Films, with the financial participation of Telefilm Canada, SODEC, provincial and federal tax credit programs, the Canadian Media Fund, Crave TV, the Canadian Film Centre, Super Écran and in association with CBC Films. Development was supported by the Harold Greenberg Fund, TIFF Studio, TIFF Filmmaker Lab and TIFF-CBC Films Screenwriters Award.
Beans is distributed by Mongrel Media in English Canada and Métropole Films Distribution in Quebec. It will be released in Quebec on July 2nd, 2021. It will later be available on Crave’s online platform.
