"Truly special."
“One of the best Canadian documentaries of the year.”
"A story of return and hope.”
2026 · 84 mins · Documentary · English · Nuxalk
Director + Producer
Banchi Hanuse
For 26 years, the ooligan have not returned to the Bella Coola River. Through the crackling airwaves of a ramshackled Nuxalk Radio, a community sets out to find out why and what they uncover is going to crack the Valley open. As broadcasts pull back the layers, ancestral spirits stir alongside the living. Inspired, a family defiantly builds a home in their emptied village and refuses to leave when authorities order them out. A Nuxalk biologist dreams of the fish’s return. And beneath the river’s surface, something is already moving.
SMAYAYKILA FILMS presents “CEREMONY”
composer JESSE ZUBOT cinematographer LUKE CONNOR and JEAN-PHILIPPE MARQUIS animator JAY WHITE
director & producer BANCHI HANUSE editors ERIN CUMMING and SARAH TAYLOR sound designer JOE WATTS
6pm JUNE 27, 2026 (Auckland NZ)
2pm JULY 11 (Auckland NZ)
6pm JULY 24 (Wellington NZ)
4pm JULY 22 – Lady of the Lake Theatre
9:30am JULY 24 – Johnson Hall
Streaming
Streaming (Blackfoot language version)
Streaming
Telus Optik channel 8
Documentary Spotlight Audience Award
DGC Special Jury Prize Canadian Feature
First Nations Award
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Her visuals are beautiful, almost meditative in gently focusing on the stunning natural beauty of the river, mountain ranges and forests of the valley.
This doesn’t feel like a documentary built to inform; it feels like one built to correct something that should have never been lost in the first place.
Banchi Hanuse’s feature documentary, which won the Audience Award in the Documentary Spotlight section at SXSW 2026, took more than a decade to make, and that patience is felt in every frame.
Winner of the festival’s DGC Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary, Ceremony is an evocative, engaging, and refreshingly talking-head and infographic-free film
Ts’xwiixw Megan F. Moody is a Nuxalk biologist who helped design the Sputc Study and analyze its data. Author of the 2008 UBC thesis “Eulachon: Past and Present.”
Nuxalk Fisheries and Wildlife Program Manager who leads the Sputc Study crew.
Qwaxw Siwallace is a Nuxalk Radio host and cultural knowledge keeper who clears his family’s grease camp each year.
Snuxyaltwa “DJ Y” Deric Snow is a Nuxalk Staltmc (hereditary leader), former commercial fisherman, frequent Nuxalk Radio guest and participant in the Stand at Ista.
Nuskmata Jacinda Mack is building a home in the old Nuxalk village of Nusq’lst.
Nuxalk Staltmc (hereditary leader) and Land Based Healing Cultural Worker.
Nuxalk cultural leader, historian and fluent language speaker of Nuxalk.
Nuxalk harvesting coordinator, building in the old Nuxalk village of Nusq’lst.
Historian, researcher, and author focused on the histories of the Nuxalk, Tsilhqot’in, and Haida peoples, including the 1862 smallpox epidemic.
PO Box 793 Bella Coola, Nuxalkulmc c/o Canada Post V0T 1C0
mailbox@smayaykila.com
