Endless Cookie starts theatrical run across Canada

Pete and Seth Scriver have been blown away by the buzz their film Endless Cookie has created.

The animated documentary, which features the half-brothers, had its world debut at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah this past January. Peter is Indigenous and shares the same white father with Seth.

Endless Cookie was the opening night film on June 3 at this year’s imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto. It captured the Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary.

And now the film is ready for its theatrical release. Endless Cookie will start screening at theatres in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Guelph and Montreal on June 13.

It will also be screened at other cities throughout the country this summer.

“It's been overwhelming,” said Pete of the film’s reception. He lives in Shamattawa First Nation in northern Manitoba. “It's a positive.”

Seth, who is 47 and is 16 years younger than his brother, lives in Toronto. He said the brothers were nervous when they attended the Sundance screening. 

“It was like kind of nerve-wracking at first when we first went to go show it,” he said. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, like, we're really putting ourselves out there.’ And it's like putting the family out there and kind of just being scared that you are kind of like making yourself vulnerable to get hurt or to get bullied or to get made fun of.”

Pete said he poked Seth at the Sundance screening, telling him to get out of the theatre before people started throwing things.

“Then, luckily, people started to laugh, so then we were like, ‘okay, we can stay’,” Seth said. “But one of the tricks is you made fun of yourself first and then, so that if other people want to make fun of you, it's like, I already did that.”

Seth Scriver had previously co-directed Ashphalt Watches, an animated comedy which captured the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Pete Scriver is a single dad who has nine children and 16 dogs and plenty of stories to tell about life on his First Nation. The title of the film was chosen as Cookie is one of Pete's daughters, who is prominent in the movie, and because of the endless amount of time it took to make the film.

“Seth is the one who suggested that he wanted to come up north to record some of my stories,” said Pete. “And then I thought, what possible kind of stories? It’s just a habit of mine. I break out into a story, I guess.”

Seth said he had previously recorded some of his brother’s stories and then added some animation to them. But he felt those stories were deserving of an entire film.

“Pete is telling stories all the time, whether a mic is on or not,” Seth said. “I found myself telling a lot of Pete’s stories. I was like ‘Geez, Pete should be telling these stories, not me.’”

That’s how Endless Cookie was born. 

“It was like also a reason to touch base with family up north because we rarely see each other,” Seth said. “It’s so expensive to get up there. It’s like the same as going to Japan.”

Seth said attending Sundance was like a foreign experience for his brother. 

“He had not been in a movie theatre in like 35 years. So, it was kind of an intense experience going down to Sundance and seeing our own movie in this big, huge theatre,” said Seth.

The brothers both said it was vital to make an Indigenous-themed documentary that included plenty of humour.

Seth believes most people only hear about the bad stuff that happens on First Nations.

“So, we just wanted to make sure that we showed that there was like normal people that have fun, that have warm thoughtful lives in Shamattawa as well,” he said.

Pete echoed the sentiment, that incorporating humour into the film was vital.

“That was the most important part, I think,” he said. “I don't even know if we tried to be (funny). But most of our stories are hilarious anyways.”

He said Indigenous people are not necessarily how they are portrayed in other films.

“I had to say to one person, ‘we’re not always out protesting or going on hunger strikes’,” said Pete. “We have normal lives.”

It took a good chunk of the brothers’ lives – nine years – to make Endless Cookie. Seth said the film brought the siblings closer together.

“He’s an older brother but he was a little more like an uncle too,” he said. “We talk way more now. It's a beautiful thing. And the one result of this whole project has been that we’ve had multiple family reunions. It probably would have never happened.”

Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.