Canadian directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's highly anticipated film follows Danish scientists who in 1922 record the lives of an Inuit shaman and his rebellious daughter.
The film looks at local traditions threatened by the rise of commerce and Christianity with the arrival of the first Europeans to Canada's far north.
It is based on true events. Knud Rasmussen was a Danish ethnographer who collected over 20,000 Inuit artifacts and scribbled thousands of pages in journals about his Arctic adventures.
"We are artists. We are not social workers. We are political artists but we are not politicians. We make things visible. Other people fix them," Cohn said, highlighting the devastation of Inuit culture over the past century due to colonization that has been "either denied or suppressed."
"Showing this movie here is so important because ... aboriginal people are speaking directly to the privileged, richest and most powerful in this country tonight," he said. "For too long, aboriginal people were pictured as cartoons in Canada."
The cast, many of whom appeared in the duo's other collaborations, abandoned their fur hats and seal-skin coats in Igloolik, Nunavut where the film was shot, for tuxedos and gowns on the red carpet some 3,600 kilometres south.
"We're very excited to be here," said actor Pakak Innukshuk. "The film will help people understand how Inuit survived."