From award–winning documentarian Nettie Wild (Blockade, A Place Called Chiapas) comes Koneline: Our Land Beautiful – a visually–hypnotic, politically–restless cinematic portrait of the stunning landscapes of the Tahltan territory in northern British Columbia.
The film follows the Tahltan people’s community elders as they fight and protest to preserve their land’s ravishing beauty – we must watch as construction crews erect imposing transmission towers and drilling conglomerates search for diamonds amongst this previously unblemished rural territory. Simultaneously, we are introduced to polymath linguist Oscar Denis, who has sabotaged drill rigs, stood up to major oil companies, is working on his PHD in linguistics and plays a mean guitar, who is doggedly battling to preserve the dying language of his people; indeed, it is the Tahltan word ‘Koneline’ which gives the film its title.
With the rise of fascism rapidly spreading across the Western world, and the very concept of environmentalism becoming an increasingly contentious and divisive point of political debate, Nettie Wild’s film, Winner of the Best Canadian Feature at the 2016 Hot Docs Festival, emerges as a timely and urgent elegy to the fragility of unspoilt nature, and draws into question issues of modernity and supposedly positive “agents of progress” that are rapidly encroaching upon an area once almost completely devoid of human interference.