- Hello, and welcome
to a special Q&A recording of "Beans,"
one of the 50 Official Selections at this year's
45th annual Toronto International Film Festival.
As part of Share Her Journey,
TIFF's commitment to supporting women behind
and in front of the camera.
we're thrilled to spotlight the incredible films by women
at this year's Festival,
including this one directed by Tracey Deer.
My name is Ravi Srinivasan
and I'm one of the Canadian Feature Programmers
at the Festival,
and I'm thrilled to be here with Tracey
to speak about her tremendous debut feature.
Thank you to our audience for joining us.
As an organization still impacted by COVID,
we need the support of our audience so that we can continue
to present films to future generations
and preserve these diverse and important voices.
I also want to remind everyone
this film, "Beans" is eligible for
the People's Choice Award.
Vote for your favourite films at this year's Festival
at tiff.net/vote.
And without further ado, I want to introduce
the co-writer and director of "Beans," Tracey Deer.
Hi Tracey, thank you so much for joining us.
- Hi Ravi, thank you for having me.
- I don't wanna disregard the moment that we're in
and the unprecedented nature
of how several meaningful
and transformative films like this one
being presented in a virtual setting,
while we're all going through a global pandemic.
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about
your own experience personally,
but also just having completed this film
and bringing this story,
your story, during these unprecedented times.
- Yeah, you know, we shot this last fall,
and I've been talking about and thinking about
how the movie we shot last fall
is very different than the movie that just premiered
at this year's Festival,
because of how much the world has changed.
So in the fall, it was a film looking back 30 years,
and the goal was "let's not forget" -
let's make sure we think about this,
let's work together to make it better and then-
But now, a year later,
the whole world is cued into these themes.
And I feel like it's a much different time
that the film is coming out in,
and I hope that the film can add to the conversation
that is going on. I feel like people will be,
I hope, more cued into these themes.
So the fact that the film is coming out now
in the midst of what we're going through,
and even- I mean, pandemic and all,
I feel like it's a really meaningful time
for the film to come out
and it's all working out as it's meant to be.
- Yeah, speaking to how timely this film is,
given the unrest and the support globally around the world
for racial and social and economic equality -
did the changing tide
of what's happening in the last several months,
did that affect what was going on in the editing room
and just the overall shape of the film?
Even though this film is about, at the heart of it,
I mean, those same issues?
- So interestingly enough,
we locked before all of this happened.
So all of the decision-making had already happened.
We locked just before COVID locked down the world.
So we were able to finish the film
and then, of course, everything stopped for a few months,
and then in these last two months,
we've been able to get back at it,
to finish it in time for the screening,
but everything was already done
before everything exploded, yeah.
- Wow. So just a very timely coincidence, but also,
it shows the impact of the moment and this film
that looks back to our own history in the early '90s.
I wanna talk about- This film is co-written
with Meredith Vuchnich,
but it's based on your own experience as a 12-year-old
growing up in this same community,
and really experiencing this first-hand,
and particularly very powerful and moving scene
where Beans is in the car with her family
and having to endure that kind of prejudice
and hatred while leaving the area.
I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about
the collaboration between you two, but also,
how heavy this was for you, bringing your own story
to the screen and to audiences.
- Sure. It actually took a very, very long time
to write the script for that exact reason.
Figuring out what I wanted to say,
but also having to revisit that time,
revisit those emotions,
I definitely hit a number of blocks,
and Meredith, my dear, dear partner and friend-
I mean, she's the big reason why we did get to
where we are at this moment,
because of that both collaborative and creative support,
but also emotional support, to figure out and go through
those moments together.
The whole script, the whole process, took a good six years
with a lot of start and stops.
It also took a lot of therapy.
Honestly, I needed to...
I mean, a lot of those things were really walled off.
There was so much resistance
to going back there
that when I would sit down at the computer,
I would just freeze.
So, I had to go through quite a lot in order to -
especially that scene with the rocks -
to actually sit down and write it.
And even just thinking about it,
I'm starting to get a little emotional.
[Voice breaking] The writing of it was very difficult.
The shooting of it was very difficult.
The editing of it is very difficult,
and it's still very difficult for me
to see that scene in the film.
But I do think it's so important to share it
and have other people experience it the way we did,
all in hopes of it leading to, one,
it never happening again,
but two, compassion and understanding and bridge-building
and all of those good things
that we really need in the world right now.
- Yeah, I mean, I can't even imagine
how difficult that would have been
for you to re-live that experience.
But I think it's certainly helpful for somebody like me
and audience members who are sort of outsiders
in the situation, to really, fully understand
what was happening and what was going on.
So, I completely commend you
for bringing that to the screen.
I wanna talk about, now, the casting for this film,
particularly Kiawentiio, who is just an incredible discovery
that you found playing the title role of Beans.
And also I do want to mention Rainbow Dickerson,
who's the mother, who is one of our TIFF Rising Stars.
Incredible performance.
Can you speak to the casting process at all?
And, you know, this character... It seems to-
Obviously there's- To view this character,
but do you see it as a representation of just the experience
of several First Nations young women,
not only growing up during the Oka Crisis,
but in this country on a broader scale?
- Absolutely, absolutely.
So I do say that "the film is inspired by,"
so it is not truly autobiographical.
Beans is inspired by me,
but definitely removed from me because there was so many
different things I wanted to explore in the film.
So I do think of her as representative
of not only my generation 30 years ago,
but of kids today and the support, and the love,
and the safety that they all need in order to thrive.
So for me, yes, it's a film that took place 30 years ago,
but these are still things that we live with.
The microaggressions we live with every day
as Indigenous people are present currently in society.
For the film, I chose the Oka Crisis,
a very big, charged situation, to really get at it.
But the environment is not that much different
for our young people growing up today.
And so we definitely have a lot of work
to do to make it better.
In terms of the casting,
this is my first feature, and I was told
over and over again that casting is everything.
And I didn't really know what that meant
until I understood what it meant.
My cast, our cast - really, they are the film,
and Kiawentiio is the film.
I mean, she's in every single scene.
And it's one thing to write a script
from a child's point of view
and put her in every single scene.
It's a whole 'nother thing to shoot that film.
And we realized it sort of day in, day out.
And I- Leading up to it, in meeting
with Kiawentiio and her parents,
really wanted to impress upon her and her parents
what they would be getting into.
And, you know, this brave young woman said,
"I'm ready. Let's do this."
And she was. And she came every single day ready,
but also with an incredible attitude,
an incredible vulnerability, courage,
which I think you see in the film.
Kawentiio, I did meet- So this is not her first role.
She was in "Anne with an E,"
and I was a part of the third season of "Anne with an E,"
so that is where I first met her
and saw what she was capable of,
and I'm so grateful that her and her parents
decided to come on this journey.
Because this film, really- This film is her,
it's all her, and...
She touches me in every single scene.
I'm so, so proud of her.
- I wanted to talk a little bit
about the formal aspects of the film.
One that I really loved
was the way that you wove archival news footage to
break up but also provide context to the narrative.
And it also, while I was watching it, it made me think about
Alanis Obomsawin's documentary,
"Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance."
And obviously that is a very seminal piece of
documentary film for this country,
and I'm wondering- and I thought this is a brilliant
companion piece narrative for that.
Can you talk about- Was there influence from that at all?
Did you revisit Alanis's film at all?
And maybe talk a little bit about that.
- Sure. Well, one, absolutely.
I delayed seeing that film for a few years.
I was a young woman and I finally did watch it in college.
And it ripped me in two. I actually-
I had to leave the classroom and go sob in the hallway.
It was the first time I saw "Rocks at Whiskey Trench"
since living it, so it was a good 10 years later.
I think it's a phenomenal work she created,
and as a documentarian myself, my first 10 years
of my career were where I was a documentary filmmaker.
I still just think there's so much power
in those images, in the grounded truth.
And it was really important to me in this film for
audience members to not dismiss what they were seeing
as, "Oh, I'm sure that was exaggerated.
Oh, I'm sure that was made up.
Oh, I don't know if this really happened."
Especially 30 years later,
there's a whole generation
that didn't live through the Oka Crisis.
And so I wanted to make sure
that we were grounded in reality,
and that people understood that this really happened.
And what better way to do that
than to have these moments of true footage.
It also allowed me to provide the audience
with some context and some explanation
about what was going on around this little girl.
In some of our earlier drafts, Meredith and I
wrestled with how much do we explain in the film so that
people understand what's going on,
and how much are we with this little girl?
And this is where we wrestled with,
for a few years actually,
and ultimately decided: the truth was, as a little girl,
I didn't really know what was going on all the time.
So I wanted to stay in that perspective.
And I wanted the audience to discover and learn things
in the way that she was learning things,
but they also still needed an overview.
And so that's how- that's how we decided to do it,
in order to provide these four moments,
to get that overview and not have it interrupt
the flow of her story and her life.
- We'll let you go on this last question.
There's a very poignant scene
that happens in the games room of the motel,
where Beans becomes an aggressor
towards a young white girl.
And I think it speaks to the complexity of not only being
First Nations Indigenous in the early '90s
in the middle of this standoff,
but even speaks to being BIPOC,
being Black, Indigenous, person of colour, back then,
and even now. And I'm wondering
if you can talk a little bit about the motivation
and the process of establishing
that particular layer in Beans' arc.
- Sure. Absolutely.
So, the rocks scene is really-
For me, personally,
this was the moment in my life where I learned to hate.
And for years, my- for pretty much my whole adolescence
I was navigating that darkness inside,
and that fear as well,
and the vigilance of never knowing where is safe,
where is not safe.
And yet the film does take place over the course
of the summer, and I'm not following Beans
for the five or six years of her entire adolescence.
And so in order to just get right to the effect that
something like that has,
and the cyclical nature of violence,
this is the route I wanted to go.
This violence was put upon her. She's young,
she doesn't know how to process it. She doesn't know why,
what is wrong with her,
and so, not knowing what to do,
it needs to go somewhere.
And so she finds a moment where
she feels the same kind of judgement. Now, granted,
that little girl was actually just nervous,
because they're the older cool kids,
but she doesn't know that. It could be super trigger-
like, we never know. It could be super triggering
is all I'm gonna say. And so-
And I wanted it to happen very soon after the actual event,
to connect the two.
And, you know, she says to her,
"We didn't do anything to you,"
as she's hitting her.
And she's repeating the same violence
that happened to her,
and it will just continue unless we figure out
a way to stop it and ultimately protect our kids.
So I don't know if that answers your question?
- Yeah, no, it really does.
I think you really nailed on something that the experience
of what it's like to feel like you're being
talked about, or mocked,
or laughed at, and being sort of an outsider.
And I think you really nailed that moment when you're out
in public and you might think that -
but it's really nothing,
but because of your past traumas and experiences,
you make yourself think that it is something.
And I think that it's something that I haven't seen
articulated much in Canadian cinema,
and I think you really nailed it.
And unfortunately, we are out of time,
but Tracey, on behalf of TIFF and the Festival,
I do want to thank you so much
for bringing your debut feature, "Beans," here.
And I'll give you the last word.
- Thank you so much for having myself, for having the film.
And I'd like to just really thank the audience for coming.
I wish I was in there, this moment, to just feel
what you're feeling. I think I will.
I think I am somewhere in there at this moment,
but I'm so used to having these talks
right after the screening.
And I'm just really looking forward to hearing
what people think and
the effect that this film has had on you.
So thank you so much for coming.
- Thanks everyone, and we'll see you at the next film,
and the next Q&A.
Enjoy the rest of your Festival.