Richard Crouse

“Stellar,” a new film starring Elle-Máija Tailfeathers and Braeden Clarke, now on VOD and streaming on Crave, is about making a connection as a storm—or is it the end of the world?—brews outside.

Set in a Northern Ontario dive bar, the story revolves around two Indigenous strangers, She (Tailfeathers) and He (Clarke), as a storm rages outside. They meet, make a connection, unperturbed by the weather. They get to know one another, trading stories in Ojibwe and English, of lost loves, community and their deepest held feelings, as the bartender (Rossif Sutherland) grows agitated by the unsettling thunder and lightening.

Others come and go, including two Aunties (Billy Merasty and Tina Keeper) who ask if He and She know their way home, metaphorically. Then there’s a windbag professor (R.H. Thomson), in love with the sound of his own voice, who proclaims, “Knowledge is out foundation.”

“Your knowledge. Not required,” He replies.

Outside, the erupting storm is portrayed as another passing apocalypse in the timeline of Indigenous life. He and She are the calm in the face of the storm, resilient with an eye to the future. “I feel like the weather outside,” She says, “changing, challenging.” They are connected to nature, to their heritage, and to one another.

Strong visuals tell “Stellar’s” tale. Anishinaabe director Darlene Naponse blends the lyrical beauty of the love story inside the bar with cut-a-ways of the pollution and waste that mar the world beyond the bar’s walls. Her experimental, figurative treatment of the material creates a powerful, poetic allegory of Indigenous strength amid the storm of life, wrapped in a touching love story.

Mystical and metaphorical, “Stellar” is experimental in its storytelling, but hypnotic in its effect.