There will be a panel after the screening with the filmmakers, and the Elders who guided the project. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born in Edmonton to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary, he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. “Foster Child” is one of the great docs to come out of Canada and Dreamspeakers is honoured to welcome this new iteration home.

Panelists after the film: Elders Jerry & Jo-Ann Saddleback, Director Coner McNally and Producer Coty Savard

At age thirty-five, Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his coming into foster care as an infant. Foster Child is a documentary--unstaged and unrehearsed--about the process of that discovery, beginning with his fruitless attempt to see his own file. In his search, Gil encounters frustration and loss, but eventually finds his natural family and a renewed sense of his Métis culture.