Throat Song 2011

The film opens with a young Inuk girl Ippik happily running across the tundra to her grandmother Beatrice Ikkidluak and throat singing with her. In Iqaluit, Nunavut, adult Ippik begins work as a witness assistant at the Nunavut Department of Justice, interviewing victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Her husband Inuusiq is implied to have a drinking problem. Their puppy is tied up outside their house, and Ippik tells him the chain is too short. Despite being physically and verbally affectionate with the puppy, Inuusiq leaves the chain alone.

Ippik starts work and interviews Sam and her mother to confirm their witness statement. Sam’s mother confirms the report that her husband fatally stabbed her son during an argument. Ippik talks to Tanner, a teenage boy who was sexually assaulted by his coach, and explains how to give testimony to the crime prosecutor, to his despair. Returning home, Ippik tugs at the puppy’s chain in vain to loosen it. Inuusiq accuses Ippik of hiding his alcohol and physically assaults her before having sex with her. He tells her he is going away to hunt for a few days. Ippik stumbles through a court preparation interview with a mother and her young daughter Naja, and realises the rape occurred to Naja. Through a flashback, Ippik is implied to have been sexually assaulted by her uncle as a child.

The interviews with the various victims are interspersed with shots of a young Ippik desperately running through the tundra and culminating in a scream, and of an adult Ippik attempting various forms of suicide such as hanging or wrist cutting. Later, she attempts to commit suicide with a hunting rifle, but hears the whining of the puppy and shoots its chain instead. Inuusiq returns to find the house empty. Ippik is shown having reclaimed her voice, throat singing as she leads the puppy over the Arctic tundra.