Personal Monsters by Jennie Kermode

There is power in confronting history, and less so than in finding the courage to express it through art. This truth—that trauma echoes across generations—is powerfully captured in Tim Riedel’s film, Ancestral Beasts.

During recent discussions surrounding the film, the conversation quickly moved beyond the screen and into the profound reality of historical injustice. When speaking with Riedel about his work, it became clear that the themes woven into Ancestral Beasts resonate deeply with systemic wounds that continue to affect Indigenous communities today.

Riedel shared that he has introduced his film to a specific group of people—elders from his indigenous community and survivors of the Sixties Scoop. This context underscores the weight of the narrative, connecting the fictional horrors on screen directly to real-life cultural and personal devastation.

The legacy of the Sixties Scoop remains a stark reminder of the awful process by which children from Indigenous families were taken by Canadian authorities through flimsy pretexts, adopted out to white families, or placed into residential schools. This systemic removal resulted in massive, intentional personal and cultural damage that continues to reverberate.

Like other powerful works exploring this history, Ancestral Beasts approaches this legacy not through simple documentation, but through a potent horror lens. It uses the dramatic power of the genre to explore the intense, often hidden, emotional and psychological scars left by these historical events.

This artistic choice allows the film to delve into complex emotional terrain without imposing simplistic labels. When discussing the characters’ experiences, Riedel expressed a desire to avoid placing reductive labels on mental health issues, focusing instead on the visceral experience of survival and inherited pain.

The film serves as a crucial reminder that while history can be painful, the stories of those who endure—and the voices who share them—hold an undeniable strength. Through storytelling, art has found a way to bear witness to these legacies, ensuring that the enduring impact of historical trauma is seen and heard.