Before Tomorrow

Before Tomorrow
Directed byMarie-Hélène Cousineau
Madeline Ivalu
Written bySusan Avingaq
Marie-Hélène Cousineau
Madeline Ivalu
Based onFør Morgendagen by Jørn Riel
Produced byStephane Rituit
StarringMadeline Ivalu
Paul-Dylan Ivalu
CinematographyNorman Cohn
Félix Lajeunesse
Edited byNorman Cohn
Marie-Hélène Cousineau
Louise Dugal
Félix Lajeunesse
Music byAnna McGarrigle
Kate McGarrigle
Joel Zifkin
Michael Reinhart
Production
company
Distributed byAlliance Motion Picture Distribution
Release date
  • September 7, 2008 (2008-09-07) (TIFF)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageInuktitut

Before Tomorrow (French: Le jour avant le lendemain) is a 2008 Canadian drama film, directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu. The film is an adaptation of the novel Før Morgendagen by Danish writer Jørn Riel. It was the third film released by Igloolik Isuma Productions, an Inuit film studio best known for the film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, and is the first feature film to be made by Arnait Video Productions, a women's Inuit film collective.

Set in a small Inuit community in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec in the 1840s, the film stars Madeline Ivalu as Ninioq, an Inuk elder isolated with her grandson Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu) after most of their community perishes from smallpox transmitted by strange traders. "Their adaptation moves the setting from northeast Greenland to northwest Ungava (Nunavik) and from the 1960s to the 1840s, when explorers and whalers began to trade with local Inuit and transmitted contagious diseases."[1] The film was shot near Puvirnituq in Nunavik, northern Quebec.

  1. ^ Chisholm, Dianne. "The Enduring Afterlife of Before Tomorrow: Inuit Survivance and the Spectral Cinema of Arnait Video Productions." Études/Inuit/Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2016, pp. 211–227., doi:10.7202/1040152ar.