Review: Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)
TIFF's 2025 Best Canadian Feature award-winner from acclaimed Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk returns with a film about promises, love and northern spirits
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) is the latest feature film from internationally acclaimed filmmaker and visual artist Zacharias Kunuk.
It tells the story of a young couple, Kaujak, played by Theresia Kappianaq, and Sapa, portrayed by Haiden Angutimarik, both in their first acting roles, who are ripped apart by an evil shaman and must race against time to find their way back to each other.
Set 4,000 years ago in the Arctic, Kunuk was inspired by the Inuit stories and legends his mother told him of a time when the line between the spirit and real worlds was blurred.
Kunuk is a groundbreaking filmmaker, lauded for championing Inuit creators and storytellers. His 2001 film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, was the first Inuktitut-language film produced in Canada. It won the Caméra d’Or at the 54th Cannes Film Festival, the sole Canadian film ever to win at Cannes, and here at home, it was the top-grossing Canadian film in 2002.
As with Atanarjuat, Uiksaringitara (pronounced week-sa-ring-gi-ta-ra, I think) was inspired by and shot on location near Igloolik, Nunavut, with a cast of first-time actors, which gives the film its cinema verité cadence and tone.
We, the audience, are silent observers in the camp where Kaujak and Sapa live with their families.
Because Kunuk likes to work with non-actors, the way he tells the story is a confluence of his own vision, coupled with who he casts for the film.
The actors play versions of themselves, so if someone is a beautiful seamstress in real life, their character in the film is a seamstress too. Guiding the actors was first assistant director Natar Ungalaaq, the star of Atanarjuat, who, like them, was a first-time actor when he was cast.
While new to acting, that cast was not new to each other. Most of them live in Igloolik, so they know each other and Kunuk, which adds to the natural flow of the banter, dialogue and action in the film.
It feels almost like a documentary as the film opens with two children playing near the water’s edge.
There is nothing to indicate this is set in 2,000 BCE. The traditional sealskin Inuit parka and mitts are familiar, as is the landscape – until the troll appears.
Within the camp there is love and affection, with good-natured teasing and gentle teaching among family members, warmth and companionship juxtaposed against the wide expanse that is Inuit Nunangat, the archipelago of land, water and ice otherwise known as the Northwest Passage.
Danger lurks just beyond the comfort of the camp, with the troll Qallupilluit watching from behind the ice floes, waiting to snatch an unsuspecting child – just as Kunuk’s mother used to warn when he was a child, a fable dating back thousands of years.
As the film begins, Kaujak and Sapa are teenagers who call each other Future Wife and Future Husband, having been promised to each other at birth. Theirs is a deep and kind-hearted relationship, as they go about building their future home, rock by rock.
However, an evil shaman has other plans. First, Kaujak’s father dies in mysterious circumstances and then Makpa (Mark Taqqaugaq) a man from a neighbouring camp arrives and offers to marry Kaujak’s newly widowed mother, Nujatut (Lea Panimera).
Against Nujatut’s and Kaujak’s wishes, and while Sapa is away on a hunt, the men of the camp accept the marriage proposal and the two women leave with Makpa for his camp, which turns out to be home to the evil shaman.
Upon returning to his camp to find Kaujak gone, Sapa sets out to get her back, protected by his camp’s shaman and two powerful spirits, Fog Lady and Caribou Man.
Uiksaringitara is a continuation of Kunuk’s long-standing artistic vision to tell Inuit stories free of southern interpretation.
While the cinematography anchors us to this very specific place, it is music that deepens our entrance to Kaujak’s and Sapa’s world via the singer/composer Inuit throat singing duo of sisters Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay, known as PISGIQ.
Combining traditional songs and hauntingly beautiful new compositions that mix and loop natural sounds such as stones, bone, and drums with the sisters’ harmonies, giving voice to the spirit of Inuit Nunangat.
With this film, Kunuk explores the concept of arranged marriages and traditional Inuit beliefs, which hinge on a person’s responsibility to others.
In the harsh reality of the Arctic, survival is a communal practice. Pragmatism rules and authority is rarely questioned.
It also means that a promise is a promise, and not something even evil shamans, shifting Arctic winds, hungry trolls or ill-tempered suitors can break.
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Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) had its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2025 and its North American Premiere at TIFF on Monday, September 8, 2025, where it won TIFF’s 2025 jury-selected Best Canadian Feature. It screened at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax on Saturday, September 13, 2025. A theatrical or streaming release date is not available.
You can list to PISGIQ on music streamers and on their YouTube channel. Here’s a sample.
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