Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]
From experimental documentary filmmakers Zack Khalil and Adam Khalil comes a visual essay that confronts the institutional legacy of collecting Indigenous human remains. This 2026 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Audience Award-winning feature follows Indigenous repatriation specialists working to return the bodies of their ancestors from museums and archives to the communities where they belong. Centered on members of the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA), the film documents the work of identifying, claiming, and reburying remains taken and stored for decades in the name of science and research. Through patient conversations with elders, historians, and cultural leaders, the film examines the colonial practices that allowed these collections to exist, and the legal and ethical battles now required to bring them home. Blending observational footage with an inventive approach, the film reflects on memory, spirituality, and responsibility, revealing the weight carried by those working to restore dignity and heal communities. —Michelle Svenson
Program Notes
Total program runtime approximately 87 minutes.
Director/s
Zachary Khalil
Zack Khalil, a member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is a filmmaker and artist whose work centers Indigenous narratives in the present—and looks towards the future—through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. Khalil is the co-director and co-editor of the feature documentary INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./ it flies. falls./] (2016) and the experimental documentary short The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets (2017). Khalil also works professionally as a video editor, most recently co-editing Alison O’Daniel’s feature film The Tuba Thieves (2023).
Adam Khalil
Adam Khalil, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is an artist whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image-making through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil is the co-director and co-editor of the feature documentary INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./ it flies. falls./] (2016) and the experimental documentary short The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets (2017).
Tickets
ITVS