Nanook of the North

Nanook of the North (1922) is Robert Flaherty's landmark documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Flaherty spent over a year among the Inuit of northern Quebec, filming a hunter named Allakariallak and his family as they tracked walrus, cut through river ice, and assembled an igloo before nightfall — work that left no margin for error and no room for a second take.

The film is not a neutral record. Flaherty staged several sequences and some of what looks spontaneous was agreed upon in advance. But the cold is real, the landscape is real, and the people on screen are living the life the camera describes. That tension between document and construction is part of what makes it such a rich object to watch even now.

Released in 1922 to audiences who had never seen the Arctic and barely knew documentary as a category, Nanook became an international sensation and established a template that filmmakers are still arguing with. Stream Nanook of the North (1922) on iFILM.