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Foster Child with Filmmaker & Elder Panel

Saturday, April 18, 2026
7:00pm to 8:00pm

Part of: Dreamspeakers International Film Festival

Landmark Cinemas 9 (Edmonton City Centre)

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April
18

Developed with the assistance of Elders, the film “Foster Child” by the late preeminent Metis filmmaker and Walk of Honour Inductee, Gil Cardinal was redeveloped with Cree Syllabic subtitles - the first film ever to have them.

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

Foster Child

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.

Landmark Cinemas 9 (Edmonton City Centre)

10200 102 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB, T5J 4B7