Four Faces of the Moon

An Indigenous photographer traces her family's past across time as the film weaves image and voice into a layered history. Rather than a straightforward biography, the work stitches together personal letters, oral recollections and archival echoes so the narrator's present-day travels intersect with earlier events. Along the way we see how the coming of the railways, the mass killing of buffalo and colonial land policies reshaped relationships to territory, kinship and culture. Multiple narrators speak in Michif, Cree and Nakoda, so the film feels like a conversation across generations rather than a single perspective. Animation transforms photographs into moving landscapes, giving shape to family stories. The pace stays meditative, with brief vivid scenes linking private memory to broader historical forces.

Released in 2016, Four Faces of the Moon is an animated documentary created by Amanda Strong and Bracken Hanuse Corlett. The short blends Indigenous storytelling and visual experimentation, and it circulated through film festivals and community screenings that highlighted Indigenous cinema.

The film saw a limited festival and community-focused release rather than wide theatrical distribution, so there are no notable box office figures; it reached audiences mainly through screenings, cultural events and educational showings in museums and schools and online platforms.

Four Faces of the Moon foregrounds Indigenous languages and voices, with narrators in Michif, Cree and Nakoda. By weaving family testimony into animation it contributed to wider discussions about settler colonial history, memory, and the continuing effects of railway expansion and buffalo loss. It helped center Indigenous memory in screenings.

Critics and festival audiences responded favorably to its lyrical animation and intimate narration, praising the film's attention to memory, land and intergenerational storytelling. Its tone is reflective, asking viewers to consider how infrastructure, violence against buffalo and policy shaped Indigenous life. Viewers praised its subtle visual language and oral testimony.