At the Place of Ghosts

🤩 At the Place of Ghosts (Skɨte'kmujue'katik), dir. Bretten Hannam, 2025, Canada/‌Belgium, in Mi'kmaq (and a little bit of French) with English subtitles and in English without subtitles
Saturday, June 20, 2026, 8:30 PM, Roxie Theater
🌊 West Coast premiere
available on tv Apple TV, Youtube Movies, and Amazon

At the Place of Ghosts (Skɨte'kmujue'katik)

Frameline blurb: A poetic supernatural horror film filled with ominous dread and ambitious narrative time leaps, At the Place of Ghosts follows two estranged Mi'kmaq brothers, Mise'l and Antle. After one of them is stalked by a terrifying spirit, they venture into the wilderness to exorcise a demon, confront the ghosts of the past, and mend the rift that formed between them years ago.

In order to heal from both emotional and literal demons, the two must venture deep into the Place of Ghosts — a dense forest where time unfurls and generational traumas reemerge — and relive their shared horror. Together, their journey into the heart of darkness could reconcile their fractured relationship. With the stunning beauty of the film’s natural landscape and its palpable tension throughout, the third feature from Two-Spirit director Bretten Hannam (Wildhood, Frameline46) is a thrilling and cathartic take on trauma-centric horror and a stunning visual achievement that queers not just story, but genre and time itself.

My take: First things first: don’t let the word “horror” scare you away. I seldom like horror films, especially the blood-spattered teenagers kind. At the Place of Ghosts is a much more intellectual horror film, with a supernatural menace stalking the characters, who must find a way to cast it out. Also, I quite liked the director’s previous film, 😁 Wildhood.

The two brothers go on a serious journey in both the literal and the figurative sense, with the looming presence of a malevolent Something always in the background. The tale is deftly woven, and, while it is definitely a horror film, it’s not a “jump-scare” horror film, with only a couple of sudden flashes of the malicious Something. It gets into the cultural roots of these specific characters, giving a new perspective on queerness, family relationships, and mending childhood trauma. It’s definitely a must see.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • Wikipedia • Skite'kmujue'katik Skitekmujuekatik Sk+tekmujuekatik Sk+te'kmujue'katik Mikmaq Micmac Mikmaw Mi'kmaw •

Typography footnote: The Mi'kmaq language uses a straight apostrophe ' to indicate a glottal stop. Modern devices tend to autocorrect it to a curved apostrophe ’, but that is technically incorrect. Also, I’m pretty sure that the name of the film in Mi'kmaq is Skɨte'kmujue'katik or SKƗTE'KMUJUE'KATIK, with the barred I (Ɨɨ) representing a schwa (ə), but that letter often gets replaced with a plus sign.